Ooo, that hurts

Working on the deeper cuts that I outlined last week, and man I'm really taking out stuff that feels precious. But, it's not present action and it's not strictly necessary background, so little by little it's all coming out. This is stuff that I dreamed up and wrote at the very beginning and that feels like the DNA of the book. It leaves me a little breathless to highlight it and hit the delete button.

I finished one chapter and I got SIX pages out vs. my goal of five. Down to 407 total. That actually took me two sessions. I took a shot on Saturday with some spare time and got up to a certain point in the chapter with a lot of background material. I got stuck at that point, depressed and sure I'd never wrangle this book into shape. But--one of the benefits of insomnia--a solution came to when I was laying awake that night. A soul-shaking solution since I suddenly realized that a favorite little episode would have to come out. I did that and a little more this morning.

So, on to the next chapter. If the pattern holds I won't get one-per-day done. Maybe if I can work some this p.m. and discover the next problem, I can sleep on it tonight and keep on schedule tomorrow.

The urge to work on line editing is still with me strongly every day. I can feel myself getting close to the end. I feels like just a little bit more revision like I'm doing now before I finally go to the line work.

Another big distraction starting up--baseball season--a daily temptation to tune in an afternoon game and a nightly temptation to stay up too late wearing out my eyes. Today is supposed to be the Red Sox opener but it's already rained out, so I get this afternoon back anyway. That mean's a double header distraction some other day.