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 …
Category Archives: Progress
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 …
A Snip Here and a Snip There
I’m working on cutting for the most part right now. Turning paragraphs like this: “It’s so beautiful.” Aimee managed to tear her gaze away from the sight. For the first time, she really noticed the trees around them. The trunks looked as though some giant hand had twisted them horribly, as if trying to wring …
Updated
I’ve updated the chapter 1 evolution with version 2. It lost about a quarter of its words in the process of evolving from version 1.5, which tells me I’m awfully wordy. This is a microcosm of what I’m doing with the entire book right now. I feel a bit stalled out at the moment, but …
Cutting
I’m in the midst of cutting now. I’ve got about 5,000 words already gone, and there will be plenty more. At the same time, I need to make some changes and figure out how to make everything link up to them. In spare moments I’m doing a lot of thinking about how these changes will …
Editing!
The time has come to edit. I closed up a hole left by a major cut early in the story. In a sure sign of a good cut, it already seems natural to no longer have the discarded prose. There are a couple of other major cuts to deal with, but for now I’ve decided …
Progress and Doubt
I’ve rewritten the current revision’s Chapter 3 to change the POV. I had switched away from the main character with the first revision and I think that was a mistake. It’s back to the main character again. I’ve also made a new chapter 4 which combines chapters 5 and 26 from the first revision. So …
I’m Done! Time to start, again.
My first revision is finished! Unfortunately, a lot of work remains, but this is still a huge milestone. Almost every word was rewritten with this revision, so to some extent I have a new rough draft. Now the time has come to pull out the knives and start cutting away the dead wood while making …
Been Busy
I’ve been busy lately, both with writing and with the day job. However, I’m still pushing hard to finish this revision. Something else I just realized, as in right now as I’m typing these very words: it’s been 1 year since I started work on this book. A year is a lot of time to …
Back on Track
I thought there would be 55 chapters, then I thought 58 chapters, now I’m thinking 62 chapters. There isn’t much new plot but there are more scenes and that keeps pushing everything back. The good news is that I managed to slog past 55 and I’m now working on 58. To start off 58, I …