The final chapter got a complete overhaul and I felt that I had said all I wanted to say.
THE END
The last word of the manuscript, stored in the computer's memory. Give it some time, let the head clear, and then go back for editing, I says to myself says I.
Until I happened to look up an old newspaper article that dealt with the main character of the latest manuscript. The information wasn't considered earlier because I ended the story before the real person's life ended, but I got curious about what happened after and I went back to the archives.
I learned a few things about motive and the emotional impact of events I hadn't considered. There was such a wealth of information to go through as it was, and here I had almost missed something that would create greater impact in the first third of the story.
So I won't let the manuscript sit around, gathering dust so that I can go back to it with a different perspective. I have to re-write most of the middle and a good part of the end, to bring in what I discovered after the fact.
THE END, it says on the very last page. It's not quite at the end just yet. There's more to be done, things I couldn't really see until the rough draft was down and the skeleton of the story wired together.
Not the end. I'll be going back to put some meat on the bones.
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