Making Sausage.

Writing a book, like making sausage, is probably something you don't want to see.

I'd hoped to start my final rewrite today, but instead spent most of the day still struggling with structure.

I had some mis-numbered chapters so I was thrown off for a couple of hours trying to figure out where the problem was.  Finally wrote the beginnings in long hand and discovered the missing digit.  Arrgghh.

It is so easy when moving chapters around to lose one, or misplace one, or double one.

I'm still undecided about whether and how and when to  include the Flashback chapters starring famous horror and fantasy authors.

The Arthur Conan Doyle/Houdini chapter is light and inconsequential, to it can go.  The C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams chapters are philosophical in nature, but don't really contain any horror, so they should probably go.   And I decided today to take out my nameless holocaust writer because I've just decided the holocaust shouldn't be used in a book whose purpose is entertainment.

That leaves me with Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and J.R.R. Tolkien.  They're the big four anyway, and have the closest approximation to Cthuhlu.

These I think I can integrate into the book.

When I did my last rewrite, I reduced the four or five Lillian chapters to two, so I think I'll put one back in, and intersperse the four Flashback chapters with those.  They are clustered toward the middle, so that will hopefully leave a good strong narrative start, and then an action packed ending.

I'm may include the cut chapters in an appendix, at the end of the book.  It's only digital, after all.

Breaking off for dinner.

When I come back tonight I'm going to settle on a final order of chapters.  I know I've said that before, many times, but this time I really am done.  I've spent two months with this, after two and a half years, and it is time to finish it, one way or the other.  Many of the changes I might make from now on are six to one, half dozen to the other.  I'm just moving pieces around at some point.

Once I've settle on the final order, I can start doing the final draft.


Later:  Settled on the sequence.

 Read through half the draft tonight, and it seems good to me.  I can probably finish tomorrow, which means I can set it aside for a week or two and come back one last time before I turn it over to Lara.