Nothing really special to today’s rewrites, just getting into the bit where I’m going to shake the plot up a bit. As it was, just set the scene a little better and revise some language.

Today I turned a short man into a tall man, because it was easier than shortening the bath. I also finished what was chapter 11 of 30, and is now chapter 10 of 29. A third of the way through, and January’s not even done yet. Soonnnn…

In today’s rewriting, I discovered that I was apparently fine with having two characters use the word “nonetheless” in the space of two lines. The word has since been taken out and shot.

I also did a touch of research and discovered to my relief that forensic pathologists in 1928 could detect morphine. If that had turned out to be wrong, it would have meant some substantial tone shifts for the next few chapters, as the police would have gone from one step ahead to two steps behind. Workable, but tricky.

In today’s bit of novel rewriting, our intrepid hero walks to work and reads reports. MURDER reports.

Today’s scribbling is possibly the first in a series of review/dissections of the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies. It’s Sherlock Holmes And The Hound Of The Baskervilles, produced in 1939.

Today I wrote up a pitch to Cracked for a six-entry “featured article” list. That basically meant writing the intro paragraph, the first entry in full, and summaries of the other five entries. Very exciting. If they accept it, I’ll link to it from here when it gets published. If not, I’ll write it up anyway and publish it here.

Well, salvaging the second half of a chapter. Or rather, totally rewriting it to get the same information in while actually still making sense. And all it took was depriving my detective of the only small bit of happiness he gets in the book. Oh well – in the book after next I’ll give him a girlfriend, that’ll make it up to him.

So it doesn’t look quite as bad as I thought. The first half of chapter 10 is still usable, the second half needs rewritten completely (and it has some vital points, so it needs to stay), and I’ve a feeling that I’m going to make the novel quite a bit bleaker by doing so. Better as well though, and that’s the main thing.

You know those days when the words just come pouring out of you, and jump on to the page? The days when you curse your fingers for not moving fast enough to capture what’s dancing through your brain?

Yeah, this wasn’t one of these days. This was a day for grabbing a weak chapter, wrestling it to the ground. and beating it for a while. I think I’ll be coming back to Chapter 9 later, once I have a better idea of what to do with it. For tomorrow, I’ve got Chapter 10…which no longer makes any sense after I got rid of Chapter 1. Bah.

Just started into a chapter where I realised absolutely none of it as currently written makes any sense, between things I changed in the rewrite, and things that happen later in the book. (There’s foreshadowing there for things that never wound up happening, for starters.) I think this is where I need to pitch out some more of the B-plot complications and shenanigans I’ve been planning, but I’ve got totally the wrong characters here for that. This is going to take some work.