David Gillon

I have actually written The End

Well, not quite, it was already there, but I have reached that line in the re-write.

All three protags now have a balanced input in that climactic chapter, and I've got a version of the last line that I like and that says what I want, at least for now.

And that torture scene still sends shivers down my spine.

I even got it down under 100,000 words, even if only briefly. (Current length 100,750 words, which considering I started with 121k means I've cut one word in six)

I've salvaged the fight with the undead St Bernard, because how can you have a climax in a pet cemetery on Halloween in a snowstorm and not have an undead St Bernard?

I've been rewriting for three weeks now, and I really, really need to take a break and sleeeeep for a week.

But for now I get to put it aside for a few hours and sleep.

And then I pick it up again and spend the rest of today and tomorrow idiot-checking it before sending it off to my mentors for line-editing.

Oh, and there was that one extra scene I was meant to be writing, that will be really difficult to get right.

And ...

And

So I settled down for a mammoth #Pitchwars editing session yesterday, and procrastinated.

For six hours.

It's just possible that I'm feeling some anxiety over this.

Not only did I make a meal, play two games, read a book, and spend a good chunk of time on the net, but I also completely changed my writing environment, so that rather than use the couch to lie on I'm using the spare bedroom in a sort of day bed arrangement (I can't sit comfortably enough to write, so do it lying on my back with laptop on chest).

Anyway I did eventually manage about four and a half hours worth of editing and made some solid progress, cutting about 600 words from Chapter 1 (i.e. a couple of pages worth), though that doesn't reflect the amount of change, which I'd say is probably about triple that - there's the text you cut, the text you rewrite, and the text you cut, and then replace with completely new text saying different things.

In embarrassing observations, I realised that I had never introduced my protagonist by rank and surname before people start using them, whoops. (Well, originally I did, but that chunk of text got cut about a year ago), so immediate scrabble to find a place I could put that in, and it actually let me say other stuff I probably should have said about what was going on.

And then I saved the file, and promptly fell asleep, with the laptop on my chest (it actually went, I think, save file, put laptop on floor, half nod off, think of further changes, pick laptop up, implement them, fall asleep).

Fortunately the laptop was still there when I woke up, unfortunately I'd also done what seems to be an increasingly common problem with my sleeping and drawn my legs up so I'm lying in this splayed, inverted frogs' legs sort of position, and moving my hips out of that damned well hurts. I'm trying to think of a solution that doesn't involve tying my legs together and not getting very far.

And now, back to the editing, Chapter 2 awaits.

Well, once I'm done procrastinating.