Full Brain Exposure.

Well, that was intense.

Pretty much spent 12 hours on Faerylander without getting up except to go to the bathroom and make a sandwich.  It was like a giant game of concentration where I was trying to keep track of a hundred pieces of the puzzle at the same time and not drop any of them and make sure they all land in the right place and so on.  Full brain exposure.

 I'm only sorry that I ran out of time and that my brain turned into Swiss cheese and I had to stop around 10:00.

Because I'm going to have to immerse myself all over again with the next writing session.  Try to do the same thing, and get all the pieces assembled.

I expect to have a finished copy in a few days.

THEN - - I have to check it for inconsistencies, of which there will no doubt be many.  That will be another job.  And then finally, with everything in place, I can concentrate on polishing the writing again.   Making it all read smoothly.

I don't know what it means, but I really like the book right now --

Basically, I'm reconstructing it, putting all the elements back in that I took out.  I've kept some of the streamlining, but put back other chapters that I liked.  I especially like the new material -- Cobb's Atlas and Bestiary.

This book will be roughly twice as long as most of my books by the time I'm done.  Not overly long compared to most books, but a good solid chunk.

I'm liking it better already.

Here's the thing.  The book was always about ideas and concepts.  It was only later that I realized I needed a plot and characters and all that.  Heh.  I mean, not really.  I knew that.  But I let the ideas take precedence.

So I'm letting ideas become important again -- and just hoping the ideas themselves, added to the more streamlined and thought-out book -- will keep people reading despite the clunkyness.

The book is feeling realer all the time to me, which was why I was sorry I had to quit.  The more I write on it, the more the characters take shape and the plot makes sense.

So what's going to happen, I think, is that I will have TWO equally viable versions.

Let's call one -- the Director's Cut.  This is my preferred version, with all the little bits that I cut out put back in.

And the other, the Studio Cut, probably much more streamlined and perhaps more readable.  The fact that I could cut parts without hurting the story, probably means I should cut parts.

But like I said, I still like the Director's Cut most -- and I'm leaning at publishing this version.  It is a full 40% larger.  This is the World I created, so I think I'm just going to hope it flows for the average reader.  Spend enough time on rewriting to accomplish that.

By now, I'm kind of glad I didn't give up and publish any earlier version, which I could have done more than once.  But something always told me it wasn't done.  One of these days it will "click" and I'll know it's ready.