I seem to be making fairly steady forward progress and it seems like the ms is taking on a clearer shape. Unfortunately I'm now thinking that the whole thing sucks because a) it's not interesting to anybody but me, and b) it's not very marketable. In fact, it may not be marketable at all. To me it looks like it's not YA (too much sex, too low-key, too middle-aged outlookish), yet not adult (sex isn't titillating, too clear and straightforward, and again too low-key). So, I dunno. I wouldn't feel so bad about it ending up in a drawer if I knew it was right when I put it there. It'd be like, "Hey World, you're missing out on the best-ever sex-heavy boring middle-aged book--too bad for you!"

One thing that's really bugging me is that I need to crush all the self-indulgence out of it. I can't really do that until it's closer to the final version, though. You have to allow some self-indulgence while you're figuring the ms out.

Anyhow, I can't remember what I did yesterday, except that I worked for a long time. Today I know I worked on the middle, taking the pieces that I know need to be there--I already had them more or less together--and thinking about them and pulling them more into place. I've got maybe four or five ideas or plot points or whatever they're called. The brothers need to leave. The mother needs to die. The suitors need to come. The sister needs to leave. Inside these ideas I need to add in some smaller ideas/points: the maid is getting senile, the father is checking out, the brother-in-law is cousins with the murdering brute, plus family history of the murdering brute. The patches of all this are laid out now, which is more than I've ever had done on this part before.

I'd like to have a full working draft before I start focusing on other writerly related stuff that starts in January. However, I usually don't meet goals once they're stated, so I won't call that a goal. I'll just say it would be nice.