I guess I'd better report on the Writing front. Friday evening, I got a note from pointoforigin who had read my zero draft. She was encouraging. She mentioned a couple of things she had wished to see (this is her subtle and nice way of telling you What Is Missing to Make This Story Awesome). One of them I knew, the other one pinged with a loud ping in my mind and set a cascade going.

So now I know what I can do with the middle of the book, which was somewhat vague in my mind. Roughly. I don't have details of scenes, just the outlines of them.

Saturday, I trimmed my slow opening paragraph, then set to work with my synopsis and chapter outline; I had to fit one scene in fairly early, so my new idea could be stuck onto the end of the current draft. That one scene re-interprets the subsequent scenes. I ended up with a net gain of 327 words, and that was it for the weekend - but now I am letting my backbrain chew on it, so I can get back to work on Saturday morning.

I have too many subsidary characters (as usual) and will no doubt have to collapse some of them into each other. The characters sit around and talk too much. I haven't taken full advantage of my setting. But the thing is not as bad as a I neurotically imagined at this stage, which means everything.