Souldancer Progress Report 3

Total page count: down to 1295.

Currently editing: page 251 (sort of).

I said before how the difficulty of this project has exceeded my expectations. That comment was made back when I was mostly replacing troublesome phrases, trimming down excessively wordy sentences, condensing rambling dialogue, and occasionally deleting a few paragraphs.

Now I've stumbled upon a situation that is wholly unprecedented in my short literary career. What I'm currently up against is a section of the book spanning several chapters in which roughly half of the extant material doesn't work; the other half does, but it's in the wrong order.

To borrow a parable, I'm now undertaking a grueling labor requiring me to meticulously pull weeds scattered amid a wheat field while also transplanting the healthy crops to more advantageous locations. There's also the necessity of sowing new plants to fill in the vacated spaces while reducing the overall acreage. For the first time, I'm starting to wonder whether farmers have it easier than writers. Sure, the former involves more manual labor, but I don't have the luxury of waiting till harvest day to separate the good from the bad. I doubt any editor would appreciate proofreading the resulting incomprehensible manuscript.

I am now more glad than ever that I've probably got several years before this thing is due. Not only will the project take that much time at my current rate of progress, I'll have to grow and mature as a writer in order to meet the challenges this work presents.

At least I won't come up short on blog material.