It feels good to be on the far side of halfway. The story actually feels like less than half, though I’ll admit that the ending is a bit fuzzy, so who knows. I don’t imagine it’ll end up being any more than 140k.
I’ve been pretty happy to realize that the organic approach, within the larger frame of an outline, is working pretty well. I feel like I’m more comfortable in my abilities, and so able to trust that I’ll be able to find my way. I’m also more able to go with certain instincts when they feel good.
My biggest worry, however, is creating twists. If you sit through any brainstorming exercise, or you’ve done it consciously yourself, you’ll realize that you should be wary of the first few things that come to mind. Those are the things that are easy, cliché, trite. It’s the fifth or sixth or seventh idea where the unexpected gems really show up. You have to be careful with those, too, though, because they’re the ones that can seem the most "convenient" for the author. That is, they’re unlikely to happen and so it can seem, in the context of the story, that the author just chose it to be so, as opposed to it happening organically from plot and character. Getting back to twists, it’s something I’ve really been trying to foster, the creation of unexpected yet logical-as-you-look back events in the story, the stuff that really catches the reader off guard and makes them want to keep reading.
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