My Brain Hurts

This is my second Sunday update, and I've had a semi-productive week. I'm on page 228, so well over halfway, but I didn't meet my quota every day this week because of some teacher training days that I attended for my teaching job. That stuff stimulates my brain in a totally different way, so it's been rather difficult to pull myself back to storytelling mindset following that. Combine that with the very tricky point of the story I am at (over halfway, wondering if the pace is too slow, figuring out what all needs to happen between now and the climax, etc...) and I just don't feel as though the story is flowing as well as I would like. I have some "dead space" to fill at the moment while the characters are travelling, and I hate that because I don't believe that anything in a well-crafted story should be random, so I'm back to the drawing board for a few meaningful scenes that progress my characters toward the climax while also addressing some of the many subplots that I have going on (all of which have to ultimately lead to THE END). I'm also back to the drawing board for a few intermediary scenes because of this ring composition that I am attempting in which every chapter of the second half of the book should mirror the corresponding chapter in the first half of the book in some way. I spent half my writing time this afternoon just putting all my chapters into a ring composition chart and trying to figure out some of this mirroring. I hope that it produces a good story in the end. Overall, my brain hurts. I'm looking forward to getting past this point. I'll probably be happier in a week.