24 pages.

I’ve had about twenty-four pages left to edit and revise in the novel in progress for about a month. Reason exists for that number: I keep re-writing and revising the first ten pages of one chapter. I’ve done so six times. After the sixth time — I’m a slow thinker — I realized that I didn’t know enough about the two characters and their relationship.

He was the main character and I’d been writing about him for months. His actions, thinking, and talking filled most of the 420 pages already revised. The other character had never shown up but was obliquely referenced. He was her son, but she wasn’t really his mother. He didn’t know that when he was young, only learning much later in life. He knew she resented him but didn’t know why. He thought he’d murdered her, but it turned out that she hadn’t been killed. Yes, it’s complicated.

After fleshing these things out more, I suddenly realized, oh, they hate each other.

It surprised me. I thought they were hostile and contemptuous toward one another but hadn’t respected the true depths of despise between them. She was secretive and using him, and he didn’t know why, but he didn’t like her and didn’t trust her. After leaving home, he’d researched his ‘mother’ and discovered little of the truth about her, except he hadn’t murdered her, that she’d framed him and she wasn’t dead at all, but had abandoned him and his sister, hiding her existence from them. All this traumatized his sister when she was a child, who responded by ostracizing her brother and becoming a cat. (I told you, it’s complicated.)

Now that I feel better about my understanding of the two, I tore out the chapter to rewrite it again. Then I’ll revise, and when I feel like I can go on, I will. Then I’ll read the novel again for more revision and see how the newest effort holds up.

That’s how it goes.