All righty. I’m on track for the better direction. Actually, that would be, a direction since until a couple of days ago I had only a very vague sense of direction. First, I stopped futzing around. Then I worked on my outline so that I was clear on what was happening in the chapters I have so far, and I added the skeleton of what I need to write. That way I can keep track.

Then, I went to the chapters and moved the bits around until they were where I needed them to be. Then I fixed the egregious discontinuities that resulted. Next, I looked at and deleted all the chapters (there were 10 of them) that were the result of work on the previous draft. I marked the ones I know have bits I’ll need. The result? -8 words which is really not so bad.

The 10 deleted chapters don’t count, since I removed them from my master document ages ago. I just hadn’t decided on a direction so I wasn’t comfortable moving them to the dead files section. But now I am and now I’m in a position to fix more stuff all the while going forward.

And now I’m going to bed. Ah, sleep. You are my favorite muse.