On to the fourth draft

The last two days I've been doing the work I thought I would be doing -- trying to make the conflicts clearer, scene-by-scene, on the typescript. It involves marking up the paper copy adn then sometimes deciding the the cutting and pasting is radical enough that I need to be on the keyboard and then keying in all my changes from the paper copy. So far I'm through 27 pages and three chapters. It's hard to tell if I'm really doing any good or just plastering over serious problems that I haven't faced yet or creating clumsy solutions. I have a bad hunch that I won't be able to tell for a long time -- until I've gone all the way through, then let it sit for a few weeks to get some distance and then reading it again.

It's a time of great uncertainty.

I'm also making the whole thing longer, bit by bit. So far I've added one new page for every chapter and about 1,000 words. Hopefully that trend doesn't continue. At this same rate, I would 9,000 words by the end, and that's not gonna fly.

On to Chapter 4 next. Probably not tomorrow, though.