So last night I put a bullet in Chapter 13. There will still be a chapter number 13, of course; something has to come after 12, and before 14, but it won’t be this one. I think that of the 15 pages in the original chapter, I’ll keep maybe 5, heavily edited.
There are three points in the book that require a complete rewrite because of the changes to the story arc that I have mapped out; this chapter is the first of these points. Once I finish the rewrite of this chapter, I’ll move more quickly for a while. I hope. I’m up to page 142 as of last night, and only that far because I gave up and brought pages on the train with me.
Here’s what the manuscript looks like these days:
Meet the Larssons manuscript, Jan. 15, 2009
The problem with doing so much rewriting is that I’m not sure it’s any better than what I wrote originally.
I went to a support discussion group for novelists on Monday night, which was very interesting. It’s the fourth meeting of the group, so I was sort of coming in the middle. I had the feeling everyone else had been an English major, which I emphatically was not, so I hadn’t read most of the books that came up in discussion. It didn’t matter, though, and I mouthed off as blithely as I did when I hadn’t done the reading for classes in college. It was fun to talk about writing with other writers live, face-to-face. Not that there’s anything wrong with you people out here on the intertubes, it’s just that most of you are figments of my imagination. The group meets once a month, and I’m already looking forward to the next meeting.
That’s it for today. I just wanted to document that I continue to plug away. I endure, which is more than anyone will be able to say about this ^(*&^*# novel.
The Unfocused Life 