Did not work on the blech/patooey part. Instead--this is how much I didn't want to work on that--I admitted to myself that I've got some repetitive stuff up front. I didn't particularly want to admit it, because I knew admitting would mean thinking about correcting, which would lead to cutting, cutting, cutting, and then reshaping. But now that I've started it feels good.

What I had was characters doing X. Then there's a scene where nothing happens but another character shows up, is introduced to the reader, and the next thing is set up to happen. The problem with this is that within a few scenes that character is back again, and there's more conversation and he sets up the next thing. The thing I didn't like to admit was that it gave me that vague deja vu feeling--why give this guy two scenes, especially up front, especially two scenes that are so similar? He's not going to be developed enough to merit it. He's not what interests me. In other words, I've felt myself getting bored about having to deal with him by the second scene.

So today I cut the first scene and am going to try to head straight into the second, and see if I can get in what the reader needs to know without taking up a whole extra scene to do it. The ms feels like it's heading the right direction, getting tighter, but I also find myself having to put some of the previously cut boring description/explanation back in. I wonder if it can work now that the story is tighter, and now that I'm actively trying to stick to the necessary minimum. At some point I will have to hit a happy medium between description/explanation and, er, the interesting part. I hope I'm working closer to that happy medium, but am prepared to find that I'm not and therefore must go back and delete again.

One good thing about today is that I've got a strong ending thought for the first chapter, where it was just fading out into drizzle. I can wrap my mind around the first chapter now, and if I keep this up I'll be able to wrap my mind around the second. Fingers crossed.

No more writing today, and probably none at all tomorrow.