The further I get into In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, the more I come to realize how difficult it is to be a writer and produce a compelling novel, fresh from start to finish. I’m currently in the middle portion, where a book can easily sag and lose the reader’s interests. Last night I stopped writing at 63, 972 words. I have another 300 or 400 to go to finish the chapter.

One problem is, when I planned out the chapters from about the 3/5 point to the end of the book, I expected to be at 62,000 at the end of this chapter. Since my word count includes one later, currently disconnected scene, I will actually be at 63,300 when I get to the end of this chapter, 1300 words off target.

That’s not all that big of a problem. Perhaps a later chapter will run short. Of maybe there’s no magic to my planned length of 85,000 words. Is there any harm if I run 90,000 words? I don’t really know, other than the agent I pitched it to, who is currently reviewing the partial manuscript (first 21,000 words), said 85,000 sounded good like a book for this.

The second problem, which I’ve been having to conquer the entire book, is figuring out how to describe baseball action, or rather the progress of the Cubs through two baseball seasons, without getting boring. I sure don’t want the book to read like a radio broadcast of a game sounds. What reader will slog through 85,000 words of nothing more than game announcing? How many will get tired if I even describe each post-season game?

So, when I came to the chapter I worked on last night, with the Cubs in the post-season and struggling, I had to come up with new ways to describe the action. No, not really new ways: other ways. Because ever since I described a lot of baseball action in chapters 1, 3, and 5, I came to realize I needed alternates.

One of my alternates is to have the sports reporter for the Chicago Tribune, John Lind, comment on action. Another is to have the two Mafia Dons assess their chances of winning the bet, based on what’s happening on the field. Another is to have Ronny’s girlfriend discuss some things with Ronny.

Last night I decided to add Ronny’s dad into the mix. I had Ronny call home after a game, and discuss the game a little bit with his dad, but then to have his dad discuss it with others in the family. This is a fresh perspective. Since the dad knows little about baseball, I hadn’t used him in this capacity. To me it seemed fresh. Hopefully readers will think so as well.

So tonight I finish chapter 34, and begin chapter 35. The whole book is planned to be 46 chapters (I’m going from memory here, typing at work while my chapter list is at home).  However, I’m having trouble remembering how long it’s been since I had each of the major point of view characters in a scene. So I think the first thing I’ll do is skim the whole book and record, for each chapter, which POV characters appear. Then I can see who I’ve neglected and for how long. That may take up most of my writing time tonight. If so, it will be time well spent toward getting out of the middle chapters and into the end chapters.

 Hopefully by this time next week I’ll be beyond 70,000 words.