The last several months have been shaky for me on getting new writing done, in no small part to all the medical crap I’ve had to deal with. So I’ve been focusing on getting editing done instead–and in particular, in carrying out the recommendation of two different agents to edit Lament of the Dove down hard.
Those of you who’ve followed the progress of this book on either of my LJs know that the first draft of this thing was a monster, weighing in around 167K in the word count. By the time I started seriously querying it to agents last year, I’d managed to beat the tally down to 137K.
Now, the target is 117K. If I get there, I’ll have killed 50,000 words out of it. That’s half a book right there. The whole process is teaching me a lot about how to make sure that every last word in a novel absolutely, irrefutably needs to be there–because in Lament, with three different POVs, I’ve got a lot going on. And I can’t waste words describing it.
As of this writing, I’m 4,500 words away from hitting the mark, and I’m finishing up Chapter 18 out of a total of 24 chapters and an epilogue. I think I can get there, hopefully by the time of my (hopefully final) surgery later this month.
Wish me luck.
167k??? 0_o Wow.
Now I feel funny for slaving over something that might not even reach 20k…… hehe.
Oh my yes, Lament‘s first draft was a monster. I default to writing long, though. I actually find it easier than writing short. :)
Fascinating! For me it’s just the opposite, and I find that I tend to “think” in short stories & novellas rather than novels.
Cool. I have written short; I have a piece about 8K that I’d written for a friend to go into an anthology that unfortunately never happened. It was an interesting exercise, and one of the things I have in mind for my shiny new site is occasional free short pieces, if nothing else just so I can practice that.
But yeah. I default to long. ‘Cause I natter on and on and on like that. ;D