The law of diminishing returns

The word counts are getting lower and lower, but it's not like I'm just lounging around, either. I'm making a conscious choice that some other things are important, too, and figure I ought to be able to enjoy the fruits of my earlier labors. When I first started this year and last year, I could pretty much write anything I wanted. Your novel can go anywhere. Now I'm at the point where I know what I want to happen, but I've got to figure out how to make it happen. Is that contrived? Is all fiction contrived? It's like those puzzles where you have to put together a bunch of oddly shaped pieces to make a square or something, and at first you have all sorts of degrees of freedom to put the pieces wherever you want, but you paint yourself into a corner at the end. So I've got to figure out something clever here to get to the finish. This need for cleverness is also contributing to my lack of major progress. At least I'm not moving backwards.