Still not getting it.

After writing two and half fresh chapters to start Faerylander, I started rearranging the following chapters.  I cut back my famous author flashbacks to the original five and did them in order.  I arranged the "falling in love with Lillian" chapters in sequential order.

In other words, I did everything I could to make the manuscript flow better.

I'm trying to cut between 20 and 30 thousand words, but it looks like it may only be about 10 thousand words.  Can't quite tell.

My writing on that first year's worth of manuscript just isn't as good as what I was doing later and I've been trying to make that better.

So this will be the fifth complete version of this novel.

It was a giant game of concentration -- trying to remember what goes where and when.  Spent probably 8 hours in a very concentrated state, and got about half done.  So I figure I'll get the other half done in the next day or two.

Then I need to go back and really try hard to make the whole thing work.

I'm far past the word-jumble state I try so hard to avoid.  But I want to save this book if possible.  For one thing I've written a sequel (Wolflander) that would go to waste! (And which I think is fine.)

I keep thinking I'll have an epiphany -- a thunderbolt realization of how to fix it.  But I'm afraid that what I'm really looking at is hard work.  So -- continue to make the sequencing work as best as possible, and then try to get the writing as good as possible and see what I end up with.

This is like some kind of karmic readjustment for how easy writing has been -- this book isn't easy and I'm doing so much rewriting that I can now say I probably rewrite as much as any other author.

At the end of it, I'll probably have to ask myself if I should go ahead and publish a less than perfect book.  For one thing, it may be better than I think.  For another, it has some good characters and premises that I'd like to continue to pursue.  I did like Wolflander, the followup, and it has none of the same problems -- and I have ideas for other books in the series.

I think I have the luxury of taking the time to keep trying to get it right -- hope for the thunderbolt.  Blood of Gold editing and rewriting and formatting is probably going to take up the next quarter of a year, so I've got time.

Thing is, I'd like to get back to writing something new.

So finish this fifth complete draft over the next couple of weeks, then set it aside and write something completely new.