So I sat down today, with the new and improved outline. And then I had a moment where I was like, what am I doing, the story is fine, I should just keep going from where I was, so then I thought about that for a while, and stared at it for a while, and doodled, and played with Itunes, and then I realized I did need to rewrite it with the new outline, that my character, he simply didn’t have enough to say to fill up 800 pages, so I absolutely had to shorten the plot.
This is, of course, the same conclusion I’ve come to several times before, but my rewrites have all been such failures, that I’m sort of punch-drunk and unsure of myself.
Anyway, it took the course of about 2 hours for me to come to this conclusion. And when I finally did come to it, the writing slogged. Man, writing sucks. This explanation of my head process makes no sense to the outside observer, and it’s terribly boring to read about, but I go through this sh** all the time. Doubt. Temerity. Writing. Editing. More doubt. More temerity. More writing. More editing.