He knows you already had, like, an agent and a published book before you started working with him, right?

Exactly. Allyson, I am so sorry the conversation went badly. But it sounds like he had a fantasy of what Being A Writer was like, and is lashing out because reality didn't match that.

Would you like me to answer that question? Seriously, I'm making the offer. He doesn't have to like me, and I can be completely honest and tell him why. I'll do it, just say the word.

Was it that bad? I think my own low self-esteem about my writing kind of blinds me, sometimes. I know that tonally, it wasn't working. I just have to trust Kate on it, and do the work she is recommending. Her notes sound correct to me. Pull out the slapstick looney tunes and bring Sam back into the real world. That sounds right.

Yeah, trust Agent Kate. And trust yourself.

I'm sorry the conversation went badly, but it's good that you had it. You can both move forward now.

It sounds like you're doing the right thing Allyson.

Busy yesterday, so not much progress book-wise. However, I made more progress than I thought because I was able to lift a fair amount from my rough draft. I knew that thing would be good for something.

It looks like I have 130 quotes culled from the rough draft for my blog. That will keep me set for a good long time. It looks like about half come from one character which isn't really a surprise.

I made some good progress during the weekend. I'm now working on revised chapter 8. At this point in the story the rough draft had 23,471 words. The revised version has about 15,000 words. That's some serious cutting down.

I'm now working on revised chapter 8 and 9. My wife had an idea for chapter 8 and I'm playing around it with, so 8 is still in flux even as I have started on 9.

Chapter 9 is going to be a bit on the slow side. There's a bit to clean up from chapter 8 and some character development. So stuff happens, but perhaps the slowest chapter so far.

I got an update from home on my son's activity.

He's hard at work on his book. He just came to ask me about which animals would be good for being his protagonist's "arch enemy." I believe he's settled on a dog.

I got done with chapter 8 in my revision. That's a bit of a milestone since I consider that to be the end of the opening part of the book. In the draft the chapter ended a bit later, but I moved up the ending for better drama. Nonetheless close enough for me to call it a milestone.

Now for an area of the book that will probably need some cutting down.