Book 2 (of 4) of the novel is rewritten. It's pretty much downhill from here.

But it's such a fucking drag.

Adding it up - this fucking story was a 20,000 word script, then another 20,000 word script, then a 25,000 word graphic novel script, then a 225,000 word novel that I edited down to a 176,000 word novel that I have since rewritten 48,000 words of.

They told me to cut it down by half. So far I've been able to re-use about 5,000 words.

When I'm done, it will be about 83,000 or 84,000 words. That's about 7,000 words longer than the first Harry Potter... beyond that I'm not sure because my word count site is defunct. In order to get to that 83,000 words I'll have written over 300,000 words. I will have effectively written A Game Of Thrones worth of prose in order to end up with a tight, skinny little book.

And I'm so fucking sick of it.

I guess that's when you know you're done - all the joy has been sucked out of it and you're left with a rote retelling of the same fucking story from another goddamn perspective because each time you change something you change something else so pretty much every scene in this tale has been told by every major access character at least once and I'm at that James Gandolfini in True Romance stage where I'm doing it just to watch their fuckin' expressions change.