Chop to Pieces, Rinse, Repeat

As is usual these days, woke very early with "Shit, no!" on my mind. Immediately understood the source of this particular unrest: Telamon's order to Ajax comes way too early. T orders A to do a kind-of-terrible thing, then life goes on as normal for a while? I don't think so. That order must come as part of the avalanche (that word is an exaggeration, but not by much) of thwarts and insults meant to trim A's sails; deflate his confidence and rising power.

Sigh. Okay then. Start coffee, check if the mouse has given up and gone away, then sharpen the hatchet yet again. Take a break to feed horses and check on things outside. Rinse and repeat.

Which is Greek For ....

Two 'characters' - one animate, one perhaps not - have been hanging around bothering me, but I don't know who or what they 'really' are, why they're there at all, and what I'm supposed to do with them.

Hah! Now I know. And one of them explains the other.

Which is Mycenaean Greek for, "It's about fucking damned time, thank you very much!"

Chop, Glue, Repeat

Ajax and I have been stuck for what feels like eons, because of our shared discontent at ordinariness. But now that The Good Kinsman is in my editor's hands and I can't do much until he gets the entire thing back to me, it's time.

Spent many happy hours with the first 100+ pages, cutting and pasting and shifting and 'why?'ing, finally have a rough - don't know what to call it, not an outline, those are all tidy, with numbers and stuff - order in which all those things have to happen - a separate doc that would be totally inexplicable and annoying to anyone else. Kind of like...

...but with a lot more fingerprints, coffee stains, and dog hair. Not to mention a haunted sword (no, please, not the YA way you're thinking of), an unexplained rune painted on his forehead, and a wretched old man he keeps thinking he should remember, but nothing comes. Plus ship borrowing, sword casting, spear training, getting married, bringing the island council to heel, and defying his mother.

That diagram might need a second page taped sloppily at the bottom.

Reviewing

Every time I review the section in which Akhaides seduces Philaios, I find my jaw tightening and then find myself - yet again - saying aloud, "Don't! No you dumbass, don't fall for it! I can't believe you ... Oh, you're gonna be SO sorry!"

I'm never uncritically infatuated by my own work, so I take this as a good sign.
Well, maybe not for Philaios...

Nearing the Finish Line, Pitchfork in Hand

Spent about 30 solid hours re-editing 134,109 words of #4, "Kinsman." And on returning it to my redoubtable editor, Michael, I commented, "Unlike, I believe, many people, I am nearly always delighted to find myself wrong about something, the more thoroughly wrong, the better and more amusing.

"That admitted, I must have all the more reason to be happy today. I truly, deeply, and sulkily thought that this was finished, there was nothing important to look at again, what a waste of time and blah, blah blah.

"Well. Wrong again; gilded, bejeweled, and stunned-almost-silent wrong.

"All best from the nosebleed seats and no kidding 30-hours-in-2.5-days later,
Kathryn"

There! All better!