Well, I made a guess on the film thing, and went ahead and finished revisions to "A Gentle Man", including it in the manuscript. Manuscript's at 26,300 words now. These were mostly minor clean-up edits, though I did insert a small passage connecting it more tightly to Sri Lankan history of the time period, and I made a big structural change by removing the headings throughout. I think they were unnecessary and somewhat distracting; they're also pretty incongruent with the other stories, and while I don't know yet how much I'll try to make these stories coherent in structure and appearance, this was clearly a straightforward fix that didn't hurt the story itself, and may have helped.
I'm pretty happy with this story overall -- my big concerns with it are historical ones. Did I did okay with making it feel appropriate to the time period (1979, with references to previous years)? And is there enough texture of America in that time period? It's relevant to the story, but I just don't have time right now to go read a bunch of American history, which is what I'd need to do if I wanted to do this properly. I'm really not much of a researcher. Too lazy. If it doesn't feel thin, or inaccurate, I'll be content with that.
