You know what?

YOU KNOW WHAT?

I’m keeping chapter one! And chapter two! I’ll re-edit them and highlight the stuff I think will grab my readers’s attention, but after writing a new treatment and realizing it is neither better nor worse than the last version, I am KEEPING THE ORIGINALS!

TAKE THAT, ANXIETY! You big, sweaty chimp, you.

I still have a zillion line edits to enter. :P

(twitch)

…now I just have to enter ten chapters worth of notes and corrections.

And re-write one and two.

And it’s done. For now.

Much-needed character development, but…now chapter twenty-three has a baby sister, and that’s not orthogonal (all my chapters are 9-11 pages long, while this one is 6 pages — ack!).

Eh. I guess some things just won’t be orthogonal.

Still a little sick. Bed now.

I’ve either committed Jenga on the story, or I’ve done something good with it.

I suspect Jenga. I’m going to sleep on it and consider. It’s a shame, because I kind of liked it, but it’s a lot of words and rarrarrrrgh. Nevermind. Sleep on it!

Night after night my heartbeat, shows the fear

Ghosts appear and fade away

I can’t get to sleep

Edited one, entered two. I may need to take a night off. I realized I have once again worked through a week without a break, and that most of last week is a blur, and I nearly failed to pay my electric and gas because of it. Urgh. Bad Steph.

I need a man-servant badly.

So, 5 ½ more chapters to edit (the ½ is the interlude and the epilogue). I am continuing to chop down the size of the final work. This is a complete inversion of the last book I edited, which only grew in final revisions.

Every iteration is different.

Unfortunately, today was complicated because (as predicted) chapters 20 and 21 required some reworking.

When I was a young shaver I was on the San Clemente High School swim team. I loved the swimming, I hated the politics and cliques.

One of the things I loved was the feeling of being suspended elsewhere. Underwater is another world. Underwater is muted and subdued. Shadows blend with light. Distortion softens every line. It makes it very easy to kick around ideas.

I knew as I scrabbled helplessly at 20 and 21 that I needed to get out of the house, get into another world — and so I went to the gym, and swam mindlessly for half an hour while I picked at the plot knot. I ultimately came away with a conclusion that satisfied my needs and gave my body a much-needed workout.

Things are back on track. And I must be to bed.

Revised, entered.

I can tell I’m going to rewrite one…again.

Upstairs to start on nineteen.