Happy New Year

I hope everyone has great plans for the upcoming year.
Regretfully, it will be a struggle to get the book done by January. Although it's complete I've had some revelations about the rewriting. I don't plan to change plot but would like the words to flow better.
I got the idea from Justin Cronin's The Passage. I like his writing. I'm on Chapter 8 of the book and it drags a bit because it's laden with scene setup and lots of description but he makes the words flow. I'm finding the book a little perplexing right now but I admire the writing.

I'm also a bit tied down with family crisis. My father is in the hospital and I'm finding it very distracting. I have already travelled to Toronto once and might go again in the next few days. I will get this book finished and published over the next month or so. I'm setting a goal and I'll make it work. It's just going to be a struggle. I guess I'll have to start treating it like half-marathon training and reserve several nights a week to rewriting.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great holidays. I plan to perk up when I can.

I've been writing this book for 2 + years

So I'm a procrastinator. I don't deny it. When I have to get something done and have a deadline, I'm there. It's organized, it's done. But when it's for myself, I putter.
I've been working on this book for two plus years and have about 63,000 words written - only 30,000 more to go. That sounds like a lot, but it's not really. Most decent sized books - 400 plus pages - are about 90,000 to 100,000 words.
It's ironic because most of our stories for the newspaper don't exceed 500 words. If they do, they get snipped. At work I've found it very challenging to write tight. You gotta make every word count.
I'm doing that with my book and it's slow going. It's easy to write sloppy. Making every word precise and meaningful  is tiring and exhausting. That's probably why it's been 2 plus years and I'm still not done.
But unlike the past two years, this time I have a deadline. I go back to work the Tuesday after labor (labour) day and I want the first draft done by then.
Wish me luck.