Five working days remain until graduation. Then it’s off to Cisco Bootcamp. Destination: a week of intensive network training. Learning opportunities and school go hand in hand, I think and besides the long, quiet, uninterrupted breaks — three and half months for summer, a month at Christmas — the greatest benefit of working for an educational institution.

About halfway through the revised outline and I now concur with Team Eagle Eye; I resisted initally. There is a way to amp up the middle, leave the first third and the last quarter intact, and take the story to the next level. Not only will Mike Brody look stronger, the modifications will add considerable tension.

The only downside that the end of year madness might defer the heavy lifting until June 10. Quite a distateful prospect.

After a review session with Team Eagle Eye, I decided to revisit the middle section of the book and consider possible enhancements to roughly 125 pages. This decision is not taken lightly and I approach the prospect with considerable trepidation. Obviously there is the risk of going overboard and writing a new draft. Out of the question.

For starters, the first 125 pages are tight and need very slight tweaks. The biggest problem: a few dropped words, the occasional awkward phrase. The last 75 pages are solid as well.

What’s lacking is sufficient connective tissue that makes sticking around a necessity. Basically the writing works given the content, but there could be more tension. To be blunt, the middle is weaker than what surrounds it.

So a revisit of the old index cards is in order. Break it out scene by scene, until a plan to even out the narrative foments.

Before I change a word, though, I’m going to see how the cards play. While it sounds like a big task, it might be a very minor amount of effort. I hope.

Four weeks have passed since the agent requested the manuscript and with no contact from their end, despite a nudge from mine, I must conclude a non-answer is their answer. The biggest problem with passive replies is knowing when to move on, since they lack a moment of definitive closure. Initially I planned to wait until Monday, but I’d rather use the weekend for writing queries. Thus I make my own closure.

I could micro analyze the outcome a thousand ways, but it boils down to this: an opportunity came my way; I tried; it worked out differently than desired. Next week is a new week.

On the plus side, the hang time allowed a great opportunity for reading — eight books completed since late April — well above my average intake. The last of Team Eagle Eye finished his review; we meet Monday night. Definitely the most analytical person I know, from our brief instant message conversations so far I heard several interesting ideas. Which dovetails with another coup, really, that I have a good team in place now for proofing manuscripts. I know who can deliver and in what capacity. I consider myself very lucky to have them in my corner.

I’ve also made another decision. From the beginning of this journey I rarely referred to myself as a writer. If people knew about the novel, it was because of The Wife, or they stumbled on the site. When people asked, I answered briefly, nodded, and redirected them to another subject. Among very close friends, there might have been a bit more discussion. But in daily life, I told essentially no one that wasn’t already in the know and heard it from someone else. The don’t ask, don’t tell policy is over, effective now. To the two friends that shouldered this burden for the past four years, my apologies. Thanks for putting up with me. So what’s changed? Well I’m no expert on what makes a writer, or if I qualify in the classic sense. I wrote a novel and I write nearly every day. Sounds like a writer to me. And I got wares to sell, so it’s pimping time.

And last, a substantial tax refund arrived on Wednesday. That’s always a good thing.