The transition into the middle section has been too big and messy for me to comprehend, so today I printed it out (the transition) with the aim of getting rid of the parts that aren't strictly necessary. The goal was to keep my writing mind at a slight distance and not get sucked into any scenes or trains of thought--especially not explanations or backstory. Just read all the pieces and mark the ones that needed to be moved away and dealt with later; that was the goal.

The transition I started with was 19 single-spaced pages long--in 11-point font. No kidding. No wonder I couldn't wrap my head around it.

I ended up having to dip fairly deeply into the very first part of the transition in order to get started in the same mindset as the MC. After that I kept myself to the slightly-distant writing viewpoint, the one that allows me to see things in terms of structure and overall pacing. I went through whittling scenes and pieces off one by one, and putting the ones that were left in an order that seemed to work.

I ended up with a transition of 10 pages (single-spaced in 12-point), made up of five or so scenes, some of which are currently just sketched notes. It probably doesn't really count as a transition, and probably won't read as one, when all is said and done. But to me, right now, it is one, and I think I may have it to where it'll move me smoothly into the middle without creating a total slump. There's no question that it's moving slower than the first hundred pages, but I probably need to take what I can get at this point.

I just hope I don't get the transitional part fleshed out and flowing and making sense--and then find that I've lapsed into a boring drone that makes everyone's eyes glaze over. That will mean starting over, rethinking it from scratch. And dear Lord, I hope that does not happen. I don't know what the odds are, maybe fifty-fifty, that it'll turn out that way. I don't expect to know till I get to the end of the path and turn to look back.