Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Good Frustrations

Wow… using the “I was ly-ing” edits, I cut nearly 500 words off of chapter two of AUC. It went from 4,600 words to 4,137 without losing content. And if my estimation serves me, it gained a whole lot of clarity from cutting all those unnecessary words. At that rate, it’ll be easy to whittle this beasty down to 80K.

I’m rewriting chapter one (it needed it!) and then using “I was ly-ing” on the rest of the novel before posting any of AUC on CC again. And even then, I’ll probably start with Ch 1 again just because it has changed so much.

That’s not to say “I was ly-ing” isn’t frustrating, particularly the “was” part. There are places where critiquers suggest I change from passive to active voice and if I do it doesn’t make sense or mean what I meant it to. I think it’ll be a task in and of itself just figuring out where it’s okay and where it’s not.

My next post on CC will either be Ch 1 of Snatch or my short story “Foolish Nonsense.” Can’t wait!

1 comment:

Davin Malasarn said...

That's so great that you were able to tighten up your chapters so quickly§ I always like it when I can scan through a manuscript focused on tehcnical stuff. I agree, it can be frustrating though. Good work!