Once upon a time in either a former WIP Update or an Editing Diaries entry for On the Flip Side, I told y’all I might try to finish writing Follow the Arrows by the end of 2025.

That did not happen. XD

Though I made some great progress towards finishing the book in November and thought I had a good chance of having a completed 9th novel by December 31st, I prioritized spending time with my family during the Christmas season and I have zero regrets.

So, where am I at with Follow the Arrows now? It’s not quite at The End, but it’s pretty close.

If You Missed Past Updates, You Can Recap Here:

• My New WIP: Follow the Arrows
• Follow the Arrows (Update #1)
• Follow the Arrows (Update #2)
• Follow the Arrows (Update #3)
• Follow the Arrows (Update #4)
• Follow the Arrows (Update #5)
• Follow the Arrows (Update #6)

September 2025 – October 2025: Prioritizing my Secret Project

In my last update, I mentioned I wanted to spend time writing other projects if the mood strikes me, and this is what I did throughout September. I spent two sessions writing Follow the Arrows that month, writing just over 1,118 words for the project. And I’m okay with that, because I really got into my secret project and wrote 14,997 words on it during that time! 🙂

During October, I took a complete break from writing Follow the Arrows, dedicating all of my writing time to my secret project. My husband and I went on a vacation in the middle of the month, so I didn’t get in as many writing sessions as I normally would have. However, I wrote 5,334 words for the secret project.

November 2025: Huge Progress with The Fellowship of the Pen Writing Group

A sweet author friend invited me to join her alternative to NaNoWriMo during November, where all the participants could choose different goals for ourselves rather than striving to write 50,000 words within 30 days. I had never tried NaNoWriMo in the past, but I took a chance on the challenge and set a goal to write 10,000 words on both Follow the Arrows and my secret project, which equaled 20,000 words total for November. Did I meet that goal?

To my absolute astonishment, the Lord enabled me to do just that! Follow the Arrows received all of its new secondary scenes that I went back and added to improve the pacing leading up to the All is Lost moment (75% mark), and then some. By the end of November, the manuscript reached 61,103 words. I met the 10k goal by the skin of my teeth, finishing the month with 10,006 words added to the manuscript.

December 2025: Follow the Arrows Became My Priority WIP Again

This is where I got my hopes up. XD

Being that Follow the Arrows was now 61,000 words and I had anticipated the book being around 74,000 words based on how the pacing was going, I hyped myself up to finish writing the book by December 31st. I mean, I had managed to do that before with The Dream back in 2021. How hard could it be?

I made a solid effort of trying to write those estimated 13,000 words. According to my spreadsheet, I wrote consistently during the days I normally sit down for writing sessions from December 2nd until December 16th. But then… BOOM. Your girl got hit by a gnarly stomach bug the week before Christmas that lasted 6 days. Writing was the last thing on my mind at that point, and by the time I felt better, I had given up on the lofty goal of finishing the book by year end. I didn’t write again until January.

All in all, I wrote 11 times throughout December, writing a total of 6,228 words. This brought the total word count for the manuscript to 67,331 words.

January 2026: Is the End Finally Near?

Let me start by telling you this: Little Miss Allyson of August 2024 did not realize how much research she would need to do for this little bowling book. She 100% thought, “Hey, I’m married to a bowler who also used to work at the bowling alley. I can just ask him questions, and it’ll be easy to write about.”

Hahahaha, no.

Not at all.

Not. Even. Close.

While Josh knows plenty about bowling and has answered dozens of questions for me regarding league rules, bowling lane equipment, and bowling techniques, we both thought he had started bowling the adult league at our local bowling center when he was a teenager. So, I plotted the entire book thinking that teens could bowl on adult leagues. This past month, he realized he was 18 when he started bowling the adult league (it was his first league and he couldn’t remember when he started bowling leagues, as he got into bowling when he was 15). After that, I took it upon myself to do some research and make sure I had my facts straight for Follow the Arrows, as again, the book focuses on a team comprised of 4 teenagers bowling on an adult league.

To spare you all the technical details, I found it’s a big, fat no-no. An adult has to be on the team in order for teens to bowl on an adult league. Being I didn’t know that when I started writing Follow the Arrows, I now have pages upon pages of wrong information that needs to be corrected. Yippee for me.

Needless to say, I’ve struggled writing this month because I’m irritated at myself for making such a major mistake. I have written, but progress has been slow. I took some time to come up with a way to fix the league situation during rewrites, and I’ve decided to move the team to a youth league run by the bowling center. I also considered aging the characters up to 18/19 years old, but the overall tone of the novel is more Young Adult than New Adult, so it made more sense to go the route of the youth league. My only regret is that I had made up a bunch of cool adult teams with punny names that won’t get as much spotlight in the rewrite as they had in this first draft, but I’m hoping I can still include them during the scenes where the main male character, Owen, is working his shifts at the bowling alley.

So, to finally address the question: Is the end finally near? Will I finish writing the book in January?

Unfortunately, no. But hopefully, by the grace of God, I’ll be able to finish it by my birthday next month, so I have that to look forward to.

So far this month, I’ve written 11 times, and have written a total of 4,756 additional words. Follow the Arrows‘s total word count at the moment is 72,087 words. According to my outline, I’ve got 8 more chapters left to write.

Which means my estimation of the book being 74,000 words total was off.

Which means the pacing is still messed up somewhere.

Which means I’ll be fixing that during rewrites too.

But I love my husband, and my goal through writing this book was for it to be a love letter to him and his favorite sport. I love this book and the characters, no matter how much I’ve struggled to get their story onto the page. With God leading me, I will see this book through to the end.

Maybe next month, you’ll finally see that Follow the Arrows is Finished! post from me. 🙂

Talk to Me, Arrowheads!

If you’re still interested in following my progress on this book after I left you hanging for several months, thank you for being patient with me. Thank you for reading and for coming back each week. Do you have any questions about Follow the Arrows? Drop them in the comments!

Aim high, stay strong, and always hit your mark.

-Allyson 😀