Okay, I have fewer than 100 pages to go through to finish this draft. It's up to over 142K in wordage and 635 double-spaced pages. I'd say on the next go around I'll cut some back, but I know myself too well to think I really will.
I just finished a rough confrontation between Brendan and his Uncle Sean, where the man is demanding he do something he does not want to do--stop being Brendan. I want it to be as blunt and vicious as possible, but I don't know if it's achieving that. No violence, though there is the threat of it, but Brendan now knows he cannot return to being himself.
The new story circulating through Derry is that he died in the bombing and his body was carried away because he's Catholic and the other victims were Protestant. If he was found to be a casualty in that area, it would lead the RUC and Army straight to his brother, Eamonn, and maybe to connections he has. So he was buried, in secret, and stories circulated to keep anyone from working it out.
But it also seems his mother, whom he though hated his guts, is the one who kept the IRA from actually finishing him off and his sister, Mai, helped arrange to get him out of the country into the US. He's more confused than ever and not sure what to do.
I just hope I'm not making this into a sort of spy thriller or mystery or something. Maybe once I'm done with this draft I'll be able to cut some of that nonsense back.
If it is nonsense. It may not be.
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