Oh, the pet project. . . . I've decided I want to do something with it. So it's time for revision. The problem is: the pet project was fun to write but it's a monster to revise. A lot of the things I let slide in a pet project are just no good at all in a real novel. Chapter two, I'm looking at you and your nested flashback. Long flashbacks are tricky at the best of times. A nested flashback? Is an abomination. I'm pretty sure they take away your writing license for committing it, unless you're doing it with exquisite artistry. This nested flashback? No artistry. So it has to go, the information has to be broken up, summed up, rearranged, or just plain discarded. I keep coming at it from various angles and nothing's changing. There is no right answer coming to mind. No moment of epiphany that if I do THIS then everything will be fine.

This novel is a sf-styled romantic thriller. This is where I run into the difficulties: Z, my main character, has to believe things that are factually wrong, but he also has to avoid being the character named too stupid to live, which means I need to give him good reasons to believe what he does. And the reasons are separated in time from the current plot. Hence the flashback(s). The novel can't begin any sooner than it already does, but the past events are important also. . . . So I go around and around and around and around, taking random stabs at it. I think really the only thing to do is yank the whole mass and rewrite the chapter entirely without looking at the old. The stuff that makes it back in will be the important stuff. Theoretically. Thrillers are a nightmares of small bits of information that pay off hugely later on. Urgh. Round and round and round I go.

Lesson learned here? Even if it's a pet project, a writing for fun exercise, don't allow myself to do something that I wouldn't do in a "pro" book. I'm pretty sure this would not be such an ugly battle if I'd fought it sooner, hadn't balanced the weight of the book on this chapter's information.

Currently reading: Frankenstein. Still. I am wondering how I ever got through this book in the first place. It's amazing how much styles and tastes change.