Three chapters at once

Started working on Ch. 9 yesterday and this morning.

Chs. 9 - 11 have always been unique in the book in that they are a trio that seem to go together, and they are much shorter than the others. Their collected page length is about the same as one chapter in Part 1, and the time period they cover is about the same too. I'm not sure why I treated them as three separate chapters in the first draft except for the sense that I needed to pick up the pace. (Put another way, I'm not sure yet why the long chapters in Part 1, which often have more than one episode in them leading up to a climax, aren't broken up into multiple chapters more the way 9-11 are.)

In any case, I had a hunch that I wouldn't just keep working on one at a time like I have been so far before I got to this trio, and when I read Ch. 9 today I realized I couldn't make the fixes I have in mind until I do read through 10 and 11. Ch. 9 has a lot of problems, but since the present action of the chapter doesn't really get resolved until a climax in Ch. 11, it's impossible to deal with those problems yet.

So I have somewhat more complicated revision work in front of me for a few days. What I think is going to happen is that I'll decide that a small number of long chapters is in the DNA of the book and I'll decide to combine Chs. 9-11 into one.

The good news is that, contrary to what I anticipated, I'm seeing a huge amount of material that potentially can be cut. The usual bad news with that -- I don't want to cut it. I like it too much for my own good.