There's not going to be a lot of writing today. Today is more of an arranging-things-in-your-head sort of day, because I think I might have gotten a grip on what I'm doing, for now. In the big picture, anyway--enough to save the file under a new name (cuttingthecrap2) and cut a bunch of stuff, and split the chapters up and give them names. Also, I've divided the story into parts. It looks like Part Two will pick up where the old version began, in the middle of action. I expect there will be a Part Three, where the direction of the story changes.

Part One is the part I'm doing now, and it's going to have a different feel from the other parts because it's not all action-y (to me, anyway. To me, it's setup). I expect it to be about a third of the book, but we'll see. Looks like it might be a hundred pages or so (or will be when it's double-spaced)--but we'll see about that, too. Right now it seems to be eleven chapters, and I've got the main points of Chapter 4 in mind--that's the chapter I've been hung up on for a few days. At the moment, I can see the entire arc of Part One, which is encouraging. Of course, having a vague idea in your head and actually writing it in a compelling manner are two completely different things, but at least I see a path ahead instead of being lost in a cloud.

Now what I've got to do is:

a) Keep up my interest, because I get bored writing stuff where I already know what's going to happen, scene by scene.

b) Keep up the emotional story and not skim along doing whatever sounds good plotwise.

c) Keep my chapters on track and not get off into description and backstory and explanations.

I wonder if I should go ahead and start double-spacing. I usually don't start double-spacing till I feel driven to, but with the organizational changes, I'm sort of feeling the need. It will help when I have to print out and read, because I single-space for readthroughs*, and the more format changes from what I've been working on, the better.

*I also change fonts and margins.