Wednesday, May 13, 2015

A Rough Day of Editing




Last night, I was thrilled that in editing Doleful Creatures, I’d gotten the word count back up to its original 75,000 before the Great Kill of Revision Six.

Today, after writing more than a thousand words while editing the next few chapters, that word count is barely clinging to those coveted 75,000 words.

I cut a lot. I probably should have cut more. And the cutting, even after the revision six bloddletting, was painful. But again, I’m getting a better story out of it. I got rid of some stuff that was redundant even with the adjacent chapter, so that’s got to be good news.

Twelve chapters to go, and I’ll finish revision seven. I’m optimistic I could still hit 80,000 words, as I’ve added a lot of storyline that still needs to be wrapped up before the story is done. And it’s good storyline that bolsters the good storyline I had beforehand.

But still, there is doubt . . .

Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

-- Dorothy Parker

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