After much consideration, and an outline to rival my best, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are roughly fifteen scenes left in my revision. I’m not sure what that translates to in time, at least in part because all scenes are not created equal. These range from the mostly written to the still non-existent, from the plot points I can squeeze into a sentence or two to the really complicated.

I’m always up in the air about how long a revision will take, and completely clueless about how long a revision should take. I think the answer varies. In my case, it has a lot to do with how much energy I have at the end of the day, and what else is going on in my life. And I’m not a full-time writer yet. (<—see, optimism.)

I’m not getting a whole lot written, right now. The fact of handwriting brings me down to a couple of pages a day on average, and that’s not… enough. I do think that as a drafting thing, it makes me a whole lot smoother.

I get up early, I write for about an hour, or a little more, and then I go to work. Another hour (almost) at lunch, if the fates are kind, and don’t send too many chatty co-workers my direction.

Today’s revision scene… I’m cheating, of course… is that I finally got down to the place where I cut a scene out entirely. (It was a numbered scene. It counts.) The scene I am working on may wind up wiping out a couple of numbers, by the time I’m finished with it, but it’s not finished yet.

I’m well on my way to having an editor lock me in a hotel room with a bucket of fish and a typewriter. I know.