Slice and Dice

Out riding my bike fairly recently, I let the gears and chain make noise, and I let my mind wander. It's funny how that wandering can go in so many directions from one gear change to another. Click-click and there's a change. This time I wandered into writing; specifically, I wandered into a novel I've been looking on for much too long (writing, not reading). 

There's a certain segment early on that has always troubled me because it takes too long getting to where it needs to go. I've tinkered with it a bit, and then the night of the ride I found the answer: cut it out like some benign tumor. So, I did: I sliced just over a one-thousand words, stitched some things back together, and sent the book into recovery. It was a good thing.

Then, over this last weekend while far from home and without external distractions, I started again, this time cutting more bits out, fixing many typos, making some things make sense. I've not had such an extended time for such stuff in a long time, and I felt fortunate. I've looked at this book many times, and I'm still amazed (and frustrated) at how many things need to get fixed. And this time, I even realized I need to add a new, minor character to take some burden off another, less-minor character. It's like an implant, and augmentation, which isn't a bad thing. 

I hope to finish this final revision sometime soon, but then I have to decide on what to do with it. The tome isn't necessarily literature, but it's as good as some of the pop fiction I've read. What the book and I need is someone to take a look at it--someone who's not a good friend or a family member; someone who'll notice the the flaws and tell me about them. But, that's not likely to happen. Rather, it'll go back under the floorboards again, its heart beating while I try to sleep.