Those of you who’ve been reading since the beginning know of my issues with writing too much and then not being able to edit later. Well, I think I’ve had a breakthrough. When I finished the first draft, I had upwards of 250,000 words. My goal for this book was to get it down to a (still long by industry standards) 175,000 words. I’ve ruthlessly annihilated many of the things I once found ‘necessary’ to the plot, and destroyed every bit of superfluous fluff I laid eyes on. I’m thirty-five chapters down, and have thirty-three to go.
My current total of words in the edited portion is just over a hundred thousand. The un-edited remainder — (gasp) a mere sixty thousand! I’m actually under my goal for the first time in my life.
Before I get too self-congratulatory, I need to remember there’s an ending I have to totally re-write. And you can be pretty damn sure I’ll shoot myself in the foot again while I’m doing it. My fingers will click out a flowing saga, and I’ll be faced with twenty thousand words over what I’d intended. Then, it will be back to chopping and hacking.
But, I really don’t think I could do it any other way; I seem to need that excess to move around and shape to my liking. It’s sort of like re-arranging the letters on one of those roadside signs – the more words up there, the bigger the creative license one can have in putting them back in an altered state.*
Whatever the reasoning behind my affection for word-overkill, though, I’m relieved to find out I can manage it.
*This statement does not imply the author encourages, condones or participates in the humorous editing of public messages in any form.
That would be wrong.
Hell and Wheels 
August 12th, 2006 at 12:32 am
lol. Good luck with the editing. That’s one of the longest points in writing for me. It takes me forever to edit because I’ll get stuck on one sentence.