I just realised that the book is missing a chapter.

*facepalm*

No, no, it’s not that I miscounted and in fact have two non-existent chapters to assemble; only Chapter Ten needs the rits and such, which is what I’m working on today. I was scanning the four pages of random notes I’d been typing in at the end of the file when they suddenly clicked for me, and I realised that there really needs to be a separate chapter addressing how one works with a spiritual hearth.

This is not the staggering crisis it may seem. The fourish pages of notes tie together quite nicely, and there were threeish pages in Chapter Two that I’ve just moved into what I’m currently calling Chapter Two Point Five. The material really needs its own focus instead of being shoehorned into Chapter Two. Suddenly things are falling into place, and I’m somewhat relieved because I was always vaguely unhappy with the whole nebulosity of this particular element in the book.

It is, however, a minor crisis in that I now have to smooth out/link/expand another chapter when I thought I was all done but for the final chapter. Chapter Two Point Five has just been scheduled for Friday in place of obsessively scanning the MS.

This is a good thing. It’s not such a good thing in that I’ve just created more work for myself, but the book will be the better for it.

Sigh.

57,017 and only one more chapter to go! Well, to write, actually, because it currently consists of a page and a half of ideas for rituals and so forth.

Plus formatting and that [INSERT BRILLIANT RITUAL HERE], but that’s what Wednesday and Thursday are for. Friday is for obsessively scanning the MS before sending it off.

Off to get the boy!

That’s Chapter Seven and Eight done. I wish I felt better about it but I don’t. I still have formatting to do, and I know I’m deliberately leaving some places rough or thin enough to be pointed out by the editors. If they do get pointed out I’ll handle them then because I can’t do anything about it now, and the fact that I’m okay with this decision upsets me deeply. I feel like I’m brushing it off, or assuming we can fix it in post-production, or putting the equivalent of a mental sticky-note on it and saying ‘I know this doesn’t work, do you have any suggestions?’… none of which constitute living up to my responsibility.

Everything hurts. My spine is just radiating pain, and that’s made me very short with people today. It’s hard to focus on work like this, because sitting hurts. Focusing is also a challenge because the farther along in the book I go the less structured it is. Part of that is the design of it — the later chapters are disjointed because they’re techniques and recipes and crafts and exercises — but it’s disheartening after having pulled off so much awesome work in the other six chapters. I feel like I’m hacking out rough, rude little approximations of writing and just kind of sticking them in.

Writing a new book sounded like a good idea at the time last July when I suggested redoing this proposal. Sigh.

I wrote my editor an e-mail today confirming that it would be submitted next Friday because I felt I hadn’t been clear when we’d discussed the new deadline (I had proposed the 15th, she suggested the 18th). I also told her about the FMS thing, because I felt I owed her an explanation for not being as on top of things as I have been for the past five years (yikes, has it been that long?). I hadn’t wanted to tell her until I’d handed the book in, because I didn’t want it to seem like an excuse, but I felt she deserved to know on the heels of the juggled deadlines and the proofs.

I’m going to knock off for the day. I’ll do some notebook work tonight. The hard copy has almost reached the point of uselessness because of the fragmented state of the final two chapters. I’ll see what I can do with it. I stopped using it in Chapter Seven because it was easier to do the edits directly in the file itself.

Things would be easier if there weren’t other issues going on behind the scenes here. It’s frustrating that they won’t clear up until the end of next week, which is when I hand in the MS.

So… close…

There’s one ritual left to write in Chapter Six before I can cross it off my list. One. And my brain just gave up. It’s going to have to stay as [INSERT BRILLIANT RITUAL HERE] until tomorrow. Well, there’s an iffy half-page I may cut out, too. Jury’s still out.

*headdesk*

But I handled the whole jigsaw-puzzle/juggling act/non-sequential mess that was Chapter Six very well, and it all works, and I added just about as much as I took out (which was a lot).

Things currently stand thus:

Word count: 55,303
Total page count: 222
The file: I’m on page 133 (minus a one-page brilliant ritual on page 111), AKA the first page of Chapter Seven (which is page 148 of the hard copy)
The hard copy: I’m on page 152, in Chapter Seven

Yes, I’m over halfway through the existing book. I would be more jubilant if Chapter Ten existed, which it doesn’t yet. (It’s spells and such, though, and those are quick to write down which is why I’m leaving them till the end.) I am also rapidly running out of hard copy edits to transfer. I didn’t expect to get this much file work done today.

I may doodle that ritual tonight in my notebook while lying in bed with the MP3 player. Whether that happens or not there will be a hot bath, because I ache all over, damn it.

Lots of work done today. Lots.

I hate working after the boy has gone to bed. It pushes back my falling-asleep time by a few hours, since it takes me a while to wind down. I felt it necessary tonight, though. There’s a lot to do.

As a result the book file is now basically done up to Chapter Five, minus a sentence here and there that I’ve marked. There have been a total of ten pages deleted today, mostly through cutting out lines here and there (the six pages gone at one blow aside). It flows. It’s tighter. I’m being merciless about the bits needing too much work to be completed.

On the other hand, I discovered a new hearth goddess today, so hey.

There’s a chapter and a half of hard copy edits to transfer to the file, and then I run out of edited hard copy. Since I have zero attention span and focus working on the computer in the forenoon, tomorrow morning is reserved for hard copy editing; after lunch I’ll return to Chapter Five and start transferring.

The file currently stands at 55,167 words and 224 pages. I’ve paused at page 84 in the file, and at 120 in the hard copy. Lots of stuff goes out, other stuff goes in.

I should eat, but I’m really not hungry.