Yay, progress!
I input the changes to the five chapters, including tightening the section I thought needed tightening, so that's good. I'm up to chapter 15 out of, um, 26 and an epilogue, so 27 chapters.
In non-progress (i.e. things I spend my time doing instead of editing, because they have firmer deadlines) I read that draft novel. That went fine (and I think it helped get me back into Trust, because I basically transitioned from editing that book to editing my own), but I've read part of it before, and I feel like I'm becoming less and less useful as an editor for this thing. I mean, do things seem cleaner and easier to understand because the revisions were good, or because I'm not reading this for the first time? It's an issue, and of course it begs the question of how well a person can ever edit their own writing, considering that they know it like the back of their hand.
Pleasingly, after my sister suggested I start Trials, I've been thinking a lot about how I want to write it--which is something I've been doing for a while. I realized that this is because I'm excited about it. That's a good sign, because sometimes when you stall out you start wondering if that means you've just had it as a writer (or just had it as a writer of this series as surely as P.G. Wodehouse had it with Jeeves and Wooster). I think I just have gotten burnt out on Trust, but if I push through these next twelve chapters, I can hand it off to people to read, and then I won't have to look at it again for a while. Instead, I'll get nice and burnt out on Trials, and hopefully by the time I can't even bear to look at that manuscript any more, I'll be all set to incorporate the feedback on Trust!
You know something? I've decided that figuring out how to be a full-time novel writer is the project for my 40s. Breaking into publishing was the project for my 20s, becoming a journalist was the project for my 30s (well, late 20s-through-mid 30s), and working out how to write novels full time is my project now.