Better and smoother...

The moodiness of yesterday pretty much drifted away by the time I woke this morning. I had some bizarre dreams about a 747 and running from one of the of the airport to another only to find I had to go back and there were no planes...and that's about all I remember.

It seems the first four chapters of APoS are the ones demanding the biggest adjustments. Now I'm slipping through much easier, with minimal red pen happening, half of which are to correct a typo or note where a word is missing or I've somehow repeated a sentence in the body of a paragraph. Just plain sloppy.

Brendan's more out of his shell and sees Joanna for the first time. He's just helped Mr. O'Faelan repair his taxi by the bus depot and is trying to wash the oil and muck off him with some snow when she appears with her mother and brother. The two of them exchange looks and Brendan is done for. But she's Protestant and Mr. O'Faelan gives Brendan a gentle warning about expectations.

Except that night, Brendan cannot help but think about her and has his first erection...and finds himself in severe pain. He has phimosis and has to be circumcised. He's already known as the Jew-boy of the neighborhood because of how he is with money, and now it's even more-so. He points out Scots are tighter with their cash, but no one pays any attention.

I had though about shifting a lot of this deeper into the story. Things Brendan refers to at times when current events remind him...but that doesn't seem to be the way the story wants to be told. Lay the groundwork and then get things going. It's not all that deep into the book. Maybe 50-60 pages, once formatted, and then events start swirling around him.

I'm sort of torn between the screenplay rule that you have to grab them by page 10...which lately seems to have become page 3...and keep it going fast. But this is a book, and I'm not emulating something written by Stephen King, so I think I can take some time.

I hope.