In other unimportant 'news' I wound up, in my initial review of the SEN, by deleting 15,000 words. Quite easily. Much too easily. Anything that easy to delete shouldn't have been there in the first place.

I mean, when someone reads a story and asks, "was it supposed to be this boring?" you know you have to take Drastic Steps. Erasing 15,000 words seems like a good first move.

A lot of what's left will also have to go but I left the previously written scenes in as placeholders to remind me I have to write something that will fit in those spots. At this point, it seems not impossible that I'll spend the rest of my life rewriting this monster in a vain attempt to make something out of it but I guess everyone needs a hobby.

The next thing I did was to write, "What is my story about?" on a piece of paper. Then I stared at it.

(I wrote this on a piece of paper two months ago, stared at it for a few days, then decided I'd figure it out later. I wrote it down again, two weeks ago, and stared some more, hoping inspiration would strike. Eventually I had to throw the paper away because that huge blank space after the question was getting on my nerves. This time, I'm relieved to say, I came up with an answer.)

Once upon a time, I'm pretty sure I wrote some arrogant nonsense about a story being more than recitation of events. (Yeah, like I'd know.) That's the kind of "what is this about" that this story was lacking. It had plenty of recitations of events, but it wasn't about anything.

I'm pretty sure I got it right this time.

Reasonably sure.

Anyhow. It's worth a shot.