Well, I'm gonna.

Did a little bit on the NR sequel, was getting depressed at the immediate darkly adult turn it started taking as soon as the backstory was brought in. Then agent's notes about the swordfighting ms popped up in e-mail. I'd much rather work on that.

Immediate impressions:

1. Lots of work ahead, on multiple, multiple, multiple fronts.
2. Yikes!
3. But yep, agent is mostly right.
4. Probably I'll pick a few major issues to address, then see if those are working out before I deliberately face the others. If the others are somehow accidentally fixed while I'm looking at those few majors, well, hooray. Sometimes that does happen.
5. I thought I had pushed myself to the limits of my plotting ability, but I'm going to have to go farther. This is terrifying, because what if I already reached my limits? What if I can't do any better?
6. Well, I'm gonna. Even if I can't do better, I'm gonna anyway.

That's one of my mantras: "Well, I'm gonna." Like, when I knew I couldn't write 80K words in two months. "Well, I'm gonna." Sometimes it's nice to have a stubborn, willful streak to pull out in times of need. It's not of much use in real life, but it sure helps in writing.

The immediate decision before me is whether to do a readthrough before I start, or to dig in cold, and not waste a potentially fresh eye. Having a fresh eye for a ms is a rare and precious thing after you've been working on a ms for months and years. I last saw this ms a month ago. No matter what I do, it ain't going to be that fresh. So the question is, do I want to use up what little freshness a month's layoff and a new font and new margins will give me? I'm not sure. Must consider.