Another exhausting day today. I was up until 3:45 last night trying to finish up the Valhalla story, and only writing about 900 words, bringing the current total up to 3300. But I'm still at least a thousand words from the ending, and it's frustrating. I'm thinking a lot harder about character motivations and logical sequences and I'm doing this while I'm writing, which makes me slow way down. I got a nice two-hour nap after the session today, which helped quite a bit with keeping my sanity.

The plan tonight is to finish the story no matter what and dump it in the box tomorrow morning. And yes, I realize that this was my plan for the last two days as well, but dammit, I will finish it tonight. Up until now, I've been critiquing the other stories first, then writing afterward as a sort of reward for getting the critiques done. I got two done today while sitting with Janet on the bank of the Red Cedar River that runs through campus (it was a surprisingly nice day today), but I'm going to save the other two until after I finish. I just want to be done.

We now only have a week and a half left here, and as much as I love this experience and all the people I've gotten to meet, part of me is glad it will be over soon. I'm physically and mentally exhausted. My saving grace has been the lovely lady I've been spending a lot of time with; if not for her, this week would have been much worse, and I'm sure I would have been found in the corner of the Van Hoosen meeting room, curled up in the fetal position and crying uncontrollably. She gave me an unusual heart-shaped plum yesterday, and it just made the rest of my day.

Right. Onto writing. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. The end of the story is near. Wish me luck.