There are times when I struggle to get even a hundred words out, where a thousand seems insurmountable and the prospect of writing two more stories feels impossibly daunting - especially when I don’t yet have a tangible way to connect the last one with the reader (even though it connects every other story).

But then I tally up what I’ve done so far, and it’s 28,890 words, and with that in mind the prospect of writing another 10,000 or less doesn’t seem quite so hard. Still work to do, but I can get there. This is already starting to feel less like I’m groping around in the dark, and more like I’m finishing a book.