23 pages. That's all I managed in 7 hours of rewriting on "Fires of the Djinn."

Blows my mind how slow this is. But it is what it is.

I have about 5 days of this before I finish the first rewrite. Figure I'll probably take a break for a week for the holidays, then start the two weeks of research and the two weeks for the final rewrite around the 1st of the year.

I've added about 8K words so far in this rewrite, so I'm at 90K altogether. My guess, by the time I add the research and final rewrite, I'll be at 100K, which is a good size for a thriller. I know for one thing that I'm going to add at least one chapter to the next rewrite, and consolidate about 3 chapters.

I have to be careful about adding too many cool firefighting facts to the story just because I have them. Whatever details I add from research need to be completely pertinent. Mostly its about verisimilitude. I want to give the impression of plausibility, if not outright reality, which will be hard.

I have about 10 firefighting books and a couple of dozen newspaper clippings. I'm going to pick 5 books to read. (I've already read a couple.) I want to try to nail the firefighting "experience." I suppose if I could get a volunteer to read it who actually has experience, that would be cool.

I want it to be plausible, but remember that I'm writing fiction.

There is a possibility that I'll add a little section at the beginning of every chapter chock full of facts. Let the reader bypass them if they want. That will definitely push the book to 100K even with the consolidated chapters.

The story is hanging together much better than I thought it would. I have no trouble keeping track of the multiple storylines and VP characters. I will probably add an hour by hour timeline to the final draft.

It's going well, if slow. I just have to remember that I'm not in a hurry, at the same time I keep the motivation up.