Paksworld

Alpha-reader K.S. called up this evening, having seen the very latest draft, with a major motivation-hole to report.   I smothered my intense desire to waily-waily-waily-o-no-o-woe  and actually listened to what she said, which was similar to what a couple of you had said, but expressed in a way that suddenly made complete and total sense.  (She has this gift.  I think we were separated at birth or something.  Or maybe, having fixed so many other problems, my mind was uncluttered enough to Get It.)

So the reason I’m up after midnight, which I swore I would not do again for more than a week (I’m not supposed to do it, period, but here I am…)  is that I put in some hours this  evening inserting one little sliver of data after another, then smoothing the edges, then tweaking this and that and the other thing so you will never know which of the many little slivers was put in this later.

I hope.

Suffice to say that K.S. was right, and even I–even I this tired and frazzled–can see that the story is much stronger for the changes.

However, on the grounds that every change requires a “reading time” afterwards, this means I can’t ship it off tomorrow…it’ll have to wait at least 24 hours.

And I’m tired.    That’s because, before all this work tonight, I had leapt from my bed early (“leapt” may be a fictional exaggeration…) and eaten breakfast, made the bed, cleaned the toilet, started a load of laundry, and started another chunk of first drafting on Book Three, before the company arrived–and then spent several hours (not sure how many, but at least three) taking company around the 80 acres, with many stops for photography, and including crossing the main creek twice, and getting myself in a nice patch of quick-mud that nearly ate my boot.    Gorgeous day for it, but the bright sun is probably what brought on the  recurrence of the miserable sinus-migraine I’ve had for several days.