Slow start to the writing, but made solid progress by early evening. Double checked the breakpoint — the spot in the manuscript where existing passages work, a mythical place just ahead in the distance — and confirmed that roughly 25 pages of intensive revisions remain between here and that place. About half of those 25, I’ll slice and rewrite from scratch. Very few gems in the pile, it seems.

The big question mark is the ending, since it is wrong for the book. It might work in another context, perhaps in a short story. Not sure how long rewriting the ending might take. All I know is that it needs it badly.

Discovered peanut butter aggravates heartburn. Major Bummer. Though maybe it was the fact I ate 1/3 of the jar.

A four day holiday weekend means four days of writing. I breathe again.

Hope for good things on this break, and some sleep.

Next Saturday is an all hands on deck workday; the students land in force. The plan till then: write as much as possible whenever not at work. Beyond that point the odds of a normal workday are unlikely until October.

About thirty pages of serious lifting remain. From there, light edits and a complete ending rewrite.

A quirk — and it’s a good one — about the this stage of the edit process is that for every page cut, a new passage takes its place. Where it comes from, I’m never sure. Many times I’m unaware as the excise, revise, rewrite cycle plays out. I just whack the weakest scene, write a better version, and at the end of the session — somehow, magic maybe — the word count falls at roughly the same mark.