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Guess What!?!? I'm Revising!
Jun. 30th, 2008 04:13 pmGuess what I've been doing the past 4 days: revising my brains out! Almost literally. Chapter 12 was troublesome, but Chapter 13 was hell on wheels. I pretty much tore it down to nothing except a few scraps, then rewrote the whole thing from scratch. LOTS of words got cut. Entire scenes have been removed wholesale from the book (which means I have to watch for references to those scenes later on of course), but I think the flow of that entire section is better. Plus I'm following my own advice and revealing a bunch of things I kept "hidden" before almost immediately. I think I kept them "hidden" because I didn't know if they were true and I didn't want to commit to them at that stage. But now I know where the book ends and what's important, so I'm now committed. Or have been committed. Either one works.
The big question still remaining: will I be able to cut enough words? Well, no. It's become fairly clear to me that I will not be able to cut 80,000 words from the novel. I've hit one or two of the sections where I'm removing chunks the size of half-chapters from the novel and it's only allowed me to cut 80 pages from the book. That's only 20,000 words. I still have a few such sections left to go, so I'm hoping to at least double the words removed so far. But 80,000 is looking impossible.
So, my new game plan is to cut as much as possible, hopefully around 50,000 words, and then hand that in to the editor, not without some trepidation. I will meanwhile start looking for other things to cut, a new gameplan, on the assumption that she will want me to somehow cut more. I think what I've revised so far is pretty tight, but we'll see. Since I have a lunch planned with my editor for the 8th, I now have a rock-solid deadline that I need to meet.
I am now up through chapter 15. I've managed to eliminate one entire chapter from the book, so now there are 24 chapters total for me to revise. Can I get this done in a week? I guess we'll find out, won't we.
The big question still remaining: will I be able to cut enough words? Well, no. It's become fairly clear to me that I will not be able to cut 80,000 words from the novel. I've hit one or two of the sections where I'm removing chunks the size of half-chapters from the novel and it's only allowed me to cut 80 pages from the book. That's only 20,000 words. I still have a few such sections left to go, so I'm hoping to at least double the words removed so far. But 80,000 is looking impossible.
So, my new game plan is to cut as much as possible, hopefully around 50,000 words, and then hand that in to the editor, not without some trepidation. I will meanwhile start looking for other things to cut, a new gameplan, on the assumption that she will want me to somehow cut more. I think what I've revised so far is pretty tight, but we'll see. Since I have a lunch planned with my editor for the 8th, I now have a rock-solid deadline that I need to meet.
I am now up through chapter 15. I've managed to eliminate one entire chapter from the book, so now there are 24 chapters total for me to revise. Can I get this done in a week? I guess we'll find out, won't we.
