April 5th 2017:- I did hardly any writing today, maybe 100 words or so because I realised that I had to go back and change a couple of details in the sections dealing with the séances the main character attends because I had over-elaborated the set up, and I only needed a spirit cabinet with a false bottom. Then I realised that I had to insert a new chapter in which an attempt is made to expose the fraud, but they can’t manage it, but this means I have to re-organise the sequence of events a little bit, but nothing too difficult. As a consequence of trying to figure this all out, I went back to the beginning and summarised very briefly the contents of each chapter, and it took up my writing morning. It would have been a good idea to do the summary after a chapter was finished, and that way I could’ve at least saved time trying to hunt for things I needed to go back to and read. I abandoned the chapter map I made a good while ago as the novel tended to take on its own pace and content as different ideas came to me as a result of the writing. [This is that business that some writers like to mystify by saying ‘the characters came alive by themselves and so on]. I think you can just see the fingers of the man who is lifting the table right in the middle of the photo. Marvellous!
