Finally finished a couple of chapters in the story which were giving me a bit of trouble - specifically, Chapters 31 and 32, which involve an epic space battle featuring fleet-level technosorcery, kilometres-tall transforming mecha done Lovecraft-style, and a discussion of the disadavantages of having a weapon of mass destruction as an ex-boyfriend. I felt that the existing gratuitous nineteenth-century literary references, shapeshifting, cannibalistic assassins, and lesbian cyborgs were providing insufficient crazy, you see, and not even the incident in which a universe-crushing invasion fleet was obliterated via the judicious application of badly-translated Swahili was doing the job.
Bonus - now I'm up to 122,000 words. After that, a mere 1,500-word essay should present no problem, right?