Chapter 11

Okay. I can't remember what I may or may not have promised about chapter eleven, time-wise. I'm discovering that it needs a lot of work, way more work than most of the chapters I've edited so far. Unfortunately, it is one of those chapters that needs a lot of boring expository narrative to be consumed by interesting scenes with dialogue. It also needs, I think, to be split into two chapters. It's trying to cover two distinctly different topics. (And it's not giving either of them the attention they deserve.) I think that, by splitting the chapter, it will help give meaning to the material.

I read through the original chapter eleven,and I said to myself "What's the point of this chapter?" That is a bad sign. I'm a firm believer in each chapter or scene helping propel the overall story forward. There is currently no momentum in chapter eleven. It just kind of sits there and rambles for a bit before stopping uneventfully after six double-spaced pages. Really, there's fabulous potential. I just have to dig it out.

I started my edit/read through while I was at the laundromat. I'm beginning to enjoy a certain satisfaction knowing that the material I'm working on in public will someday lead to scenes that would be scandalous to work on in public. (And it makes me even happier to know that I'll be working those ones over in public too, most likely.)

Also on the plus side of public editing? There is no pesky cat trying to distract me.

Later!

p.s. The spellcheck function here sucks. It marked three words in this post as wrong, and then proceeded to suggest the exact same word--spelling, capitalization and all--as a correction. Maybe it's just being overly cautious, but when I spell "satisfaction" I mean "satisfaction." Don't mark things wrong that aren't spelled wrong!