Still on Chapter 2

Well, the comments my wife had on Chapter 2 over the weekend convinced me that I need to do a little more work.

The obvious need, which I took care of this morning, was to straighten out the order of presentation. There was too much jumping back in forth in time so that it was was difficult at a basic level to understand what was happening in time.

I also trimmed out two scenes--deleting most of them and incorporating parts of them into other scences--which reduced it by about 2 pages. (1%! Big whoop.)

So now it is hopefully much more intelligible. I'm going to see if my wife can spare some time tonight to look at the first half of the chapter that was so confusing and confirm that.

What I fear, though, is that it is more obvious where it fails to be meaningful. I have a nagging sense that I'm evading spots where I know in my heart it is not really developed well. But I really want to keep moving forward, so I think that's what I'll probably do tomorrow.

I've been thinking more and more lately that it's time for another reader. I'm trying to postpone that as long as possible, but it's on my mind a lot.