Still wrastlin' words.

I've rewritten about 25% of the chapters.  I'm making so many changes that it's becoming another "rough" draft, instead of a reading copy.

So be it.

It's going to take at least 2 years to finish this thing, which is unexpected.  One of the reasons I started writing again was because I thought I could just dish it out, the way I write my blog.

Hasn't turned out that way.  The book gets steadily more complicated and layered.  I throw out things that work well on their own -- stuff that might read well as a single chapter read on a single day -- for the overall feel of the book.  So no one chapter is designed for immediate impact but all chapters are designed for the overall impact.

That's what a book is, I think.

I've created two new chapter breaks, and the novel is currently 99,370 words.  I'm guessing that fleshing it out is going to add another 10,000 to 20,000 words.

Which means that the next draft I can cut anything that doesn't work without worrying about not having enough book.

I believe I've improved it dramatically, so that now I'm slightly embarrassed by the edition  I got everyone to read earlier.  I see that draft trying to get by on ideas, but which read flat -- without forward momentum or suspense.

But it's all  part of the process.

As soon as I'm done with this draft, I'll go back to The Reluctant Wizard.  I'm going to try to do some outlining for that book before I set in to actually rewriting it.  Don't know if that will work, because most of my ideas actually come from writing.

Meanwhile, in the current book, I've pretty much thrown out the "what" mystery that I had in earlier drafts.  It wasn't working -- it just seemed ingenuous.  The main character kept questioning what was obvious.

But I'm playing up the "when" mystery more, which I hope creates more suspense, as well as the implicit, "why and how."

Pretty vague, I know.  I've always been a bit more protective of the actual plot of this book, even though I know no one is out to steal it or anything -- but the 'high concept' part of the book, if not the actual book, is 'steal-able' if you will.