Looking at the stats for this site, I noticed that one of the most popular pages (still not hugely popular, of course) was HMS Wasp And The Cursing Stones Of Tory Island, largely due to the occasional link from someone talking about bullauns on a forum. This led me to re-read the page, and wince. So I’ve fixed up the more egregious crimes against writing, replaced some watermarked images with public domain and creative commons ones, and added some new images to break it up a bit more. Hopefully now random visitors will enjoy it more.

Having decided that the last five chapters need to be scrapped (bits can be pulled out and re-used, but overall a wash), and inspired by reading Rewire Your Wetware, I decide to draw a Mind Map of the concepts and events I need to get into the ending. I can recommend it for anyone going into the end of a novel, it’s a great way to make sure you don’t drop any threads. Lot of loose ends to tie up, but I think I can see my way out of the forest now.

Today I reached the end of Chapter 25, and the end of chapters I can rewrite while keeping them roughly the same. The changes I’ve made or am deciding to make render the current setup of the last five chapters unusable. So it’s back to the drawing board for them!

Hurtling headlong towards chapter 25, where I will need to start some serious restructuring. Which is good – current chronology is totally wonky. Time to rebuild it.

Progress, the characters are actually moving somewhere. They are quite hungover and are accompanied by a depressed policeman with a moustache.

Currently rewriting terrible conversation to not be terrible and have a point. Probably a good idea.

Updating a boring conversation that repeated info we already knew to instead include slapstick and university politics. Progress! I think I may now introduce my original motive as a red herring. Next step, come up with a new motive instead. That would be a good idea.

Another chapter covered in little red dotted lines, preparatory to being sliced to bits. This one I think the core conceit is good, but it’s really clumsily executed. Even the good dialogue is bad. We can rebuild it. We have the technology.

Today I wrote a pitch to Overthinking It on an article about the Rubberbandits. I also wrote about half the article. If they don’t accept it, I will write the article anyway and stick it up here – same as I did with the last two articles I pitched them, and the one that I didn’t think was good enough to pitch. If they accept it, of course, it’ll go up on their site. Excelsior!

Spent most of the day dealing with automobile shenanigans, so plans to write a draft to pitch to OverthinkingIt went out the window. Instead, some rearrangement of a delicate discussion of illegal sexualities in 1920s Ireland.