“… and another one bites, another one bites the dust.”
Got the pages. Ripped out one solid 26-page chunk that was odious, found some stuff I liked, managed to locate a thread to hang onto. And spent some time outdoors, tromping through the grass, contemplating what I have to do to fix this thing.
Have a plan now, and having a plan makes things saner. I’m going in as soon as I finish the edit. I’m going to take one day to write a line-for-scene outline, careening through my existing scenes and my “must write TC scenes,” and selecting only those that move the story forward at light speed.I ‘m going to weave the two main threads of the story through the line-per-scene, massacring rambling sub-plots and cool-but-pointless worldbuilding.
Then, on as tight a schedule as I can manage, I’m diving into the type-in to rip the shit out of the manuscript. I don’t know if I can do the type-in in twelve days; I never expected it to need this much work. But the walk gave me a managable approach, and if twelve days proves too little time, I’ll start working tandem, doing my 2500 new words on Bad Moon Rising first thing every morning, and chasing it with X number of pages of the Hawkspar type-in. I’ll come in on budget with the words, and with a book I can love.
I’m not anticipating a picnic. But today I finally managed to wrap my head around the way through this thing.
I’m glad things are going better, Holly. 🙂
Sounds like it has and will be a rough ride, but you’ve faced down worse; you can do this. Good luck. 🙂
Hershey is doing much dancing in celebra….oh, wait, no, that was for something else. Never mind.
Glad to hear you’ve got your head wrapped around it. And what, one, two laps around the perimeter of the yard was all it took, right? Nothing like a tramp through the grass to help line things up.