Slow progress

Despite my silence I have not been idle. I am still working on the same story but have, in the interim, heavily restructured the beginning and written some bits of the middle and end to give me a clearer picture of what I'm aiming for. The result is that I'm much more comfortable with what I'm writing and hopeful of making progress. I don't feel quite so much that I'm making it up as I go along anymore even though I am, of course, making it up as I go along.

I mentioned in my last post that I had cut 4000 words from an earlier draft - I probably cut another 1000 or so after that. I'm kind of caught up with where I was previously, word-count wise, but I think they're better words.

In particular I am more aware of the types of weirdness I want to put into the story, albeit that I fully expect a second draft to introduce some substantial revisions. This dismays me not one jot: I've said since the beginning that this story is being written as part of an extended learning exercise and, from that perspective, false starts, deletions and revisions are very positive.