It goes without saying that I’m back to work on the novel. I managed to relax for a little less than seventy-two hours, even though most of that time relaxing was spent thinking about the novel. I read through it in less than twenty-four hours and had a mixed reaction. I was both pleased and disgusted. In the end, thankfully, I was more pleased.

My first thought upon finishing was that there was an overwhelming amount of work to do, and, like most people, when I’m overwhelmed I get depressed and mope around about all the pain and misery that I just can’t seem to get away from. Of course life is this cruel machine in whose belly we are all starving, etc., etc. At least this phase is accelerated at this late stage in the process: I was depressed for no more than a few hours. I went back to the first chapter—which needed more work than any other part of the novel—and isolated every single problem that I could find. After that I skimmed through the rest of the book and flagged the individual scenes that left me uneasy on that first read. The result? I feel amazing.

Like most amateur novelists I have a day job. I am a purchasing agent at a chemical manufacturer. In addition to my normal purchasing functions I have my hand in other departments here and there, the primary focus of my position—overall—being cost savings. What I see a lot in the corporate world is rash decision making. When my coworkers make important decisions based on intuition I shake my head and walk away. The only way to truly know the right decision is to do a cost analysis. Once you’ve done a cost analysis, you can see things in black and white. Once you have the raw data, you have the power to make a decision.

When I looked over my manuscript and saw only six post-it flags sticking out from the pages I felt like a changed person. There it was in black and white: the six scenes that make me uneasy. Everything else is syntactical. Quantifying the revision process completely turned my outlook on the entire novel. That intuition I had that everything was wrong—that the novel was a big mess—is a perfect example of the deceit of which our hearts are all capable. Six small problems. Six scenes to examine. Six is a small number. Six I can handle.

So what’s next? The first chapter is covered in revision notes. After that everything seems to fall into place, save for those six flagged scenes. For the first time I feel like I’m reaching the end. I feel like it really won’t be much longer. I’m growing more passionate every day. The novel is starting to look how I want it to look. I’d like to say it’s becoming what I envisioned almost two years ago but that wouldn’t be true. It’s a different book. A better book. At this moment it is the best thing I have ever created and it’s only going to improve from there. I guess the only question left is whether or not my best is worth a damn in the wintry eyes of agents and publishers and (heaven help me) critics. That I can’t let myself think about. It’s far too disturbing.