Just finished up revising chapter twelve and doing a re-org of the chapters that follow, leaving me with ten chapters to go before the novel is completely revised.

It's slow, steady work, but quite rewarding in itself -- I can see the book I wanted to write start to rise from the depths of my prose, as I hack and slash at the ugly expository sections and prune away the unnecessary explanations and plot rehashings.

This chapter is fun, because I get to hook up my 65-year-old protag with the hot mother of one of the Cuban players on his team, on Christmas day, no less. Spicy!

I didn't get a chance to record chapter two on my tape recorder today -- I've been experimenting with reading the first chapters of my novel into my old tape recorder and listening to them as I drive to and from work, to find out where I need to tweak the words.

Part of me wants to re-record the first chapter, because I'm practically whispering in that reading (I was doing it at work, in a closed-off side room!), but if my co-worker remembers to bring in his digital "tape recorder" tomorrow, I can record the opening 3 chapters and have them immediately digitized as WAV files or MP3, which I can slap onto my Web site for folks to listen to.

Or maybe I'll just focus on my revising and not let myself get sidetracked (again!). I'm also putting the agent stuff on hold until I get back from the beach after Memorial Day.

And then there's the novel I want to outline while I'm on vacation, the one about the father whose young son goes missing in the woods nex to their organic farm outside Chapel Hill...

But I digress.

I now give you, the ubiquitous Progress-O-Matic!

54,500 / 95,000 (57.0%)

I really need to go to bed... Later!