Rather than push through another chapter or two, I spent my time hunting for unnecessary "filter" words in my manuscript (words like see, hear, think, feel, just, that, suddenly, etc) and making some stylistic refinements on the fly. I had expected the text would get longer as a result of dishing out synonyms and restructuring sentences, but to my surprise the word count dropped by almost 2000 words.

Going to continue with this later. I believe I can submit an extraordinary manuscript if I really try.

Unless I've grossly underestimated, "The Linen Butterfly" probably won't be my big break. Rather, the value I see in this project is in pushing my technical skills to their limit. "The Vimana Incident" was the best book I could write in 2014 in under a year. "Butterfly" will be the best I can write in 2017, period. My enthusiasm for this project remains incandescent.