Between being busy at work and working hard on reducing the size of my novel, I’ve been neglected the Blog. On the good side, my novel has shrunk down to about 126,500 words. It’s finally in the ballpark of being where I want it to be and down 27,000 words from the last revision. I’m …
Author Archives: Erik
An E-Tangent
I find the prospect of e-books interesting. I have a Sony PRS-600 e-reader, but I haven’t used it for books yet. Right now I’m using it for my own manuscript, and for making notes. It’s a lot more convenient than printing out everything, though writing on it with a stylus leaves a lot to be …
Pragmatism
I’m still working hard to remove words. So far I don’t think I’ve done much damage to the story, though it might read a better with some more description and details. At some point, I’ll have to delete some scenes that I think will hurt the story, those will be some painful cuts. Now I’ve …
More Making Less
I just cut out a mighty chunk of 3,000 words. I think it takes away from the story some, but sacrifices will have to be made to get my word count down. The reason I’m going through the effort is twofold. First, it’s good to go through and remove whatever seems unneeded. Maybe it’s a …
Making Progress in Reverse
I’ve been slowly losing words. Right now I’m about 10,000 down from what I call version 1.5. In the process I’ve removed five chapters completely. I still need to lose 23,000 words from what’s left to hit my goal of 120,000 words. Getting down to 115,000 would be ideal, but getting rid of 33,000 words …
Not Dead
It’s been a long time. When I sit down in front of the computer and have a few moments I tend to want to work on the book instead of working on the blog, so the blog doesn’t get enough attention. I’m going to try to get better about doing more updates. The other factor …
Adverbs
Adverbs are bad. That’s a common message in writing advice and there’s nothing like actually doing some writing to see the logic behind that message. You can’t eliminate adverbs entirely, they do serve a purpose, but I think of them as hints that maybe this a place where the writing can be strengthened. There are …
The Reading List
I have a new section on my blog! Well, maybe it’s not that exciting. I have a list of books or series that I’ve read or started reading and I recommend, don’t recommend , or something in between. As I have time, I’ll add the reasons for my rankings, and more books as I either …
Plot, Detail, and Word Count
147k words and counting . . . backwards. Right now I’m trying to squeeze as many words as I can out of “The Dead Mountain”. Partly, that’s because the longer a book is, the harder it’ll be to get published. However, it also makes for a better book period. I can see the flow improving …
Stating the Obvious
This is a kind of cut that I’m finding, and one I’m glad to get rid of. Aimee twisted around, surveying the field for the little boy. She didn’t see him anywhere. “Where’d he go?” The problem here is that the I’m stating the obvious. The action and the dialogue indicate that Aimee can’t see …