It doesn't seem much like progress when all you do is spend the day reading the manuscript (between helping ferry the cat around), but I think I did accomplish some things. First, I actually pretty much enjoyed the book. Second, I think it's hanging together. There's a caveat to the second, which is very often at this stage when I re-read the manuscript as far as I've gotten, I think, "Hey, this isn't bad," and then spend ten days trying to figure out why I can't get any further, and it turns out it's because "not bad" does not equate to "right". I think/hope/pray I don't have that problem this time.

A small epiphany suggests to me that moving this scene as I'm about to might make the whole last hundred pages of the book much more exciting. I've got to look at the last hundred-hundred-fifty pages of the original manuscript and see if there are any scenes that I'll be able to re-use. There are several I can, but then there are ones where, for example, a pivotal character in the original scene is now dead, suggesting that, y'know, it's not going to be salvageable. Actually, there are three or five chapters that can be re-used almost wholesale, which is phenomenal. The gist of several others can be used, and the last thing I really should do tonight is re-arrange the hard copies I have into a semblance of the order they'll be presented in in the revised book, so that I feel a little more like I've got some structure to work from.

There are scenes I need to punch up, scenes I need to clarify, maybe one or two scenes that need to be cut, but I'm starting to (*gasp*) feel like maybe I've got a book here. *knocks on wood*