Dem bones

[pjthompson]

You know that thing where you’ve edited a book so often you’ve cut all the life out of it? Yeah, that.

I’ve been reading the last hardcore edit I did on Shivery Bones with an eye towards e-booking it in some future when I magically have the time and wherewithal. I haven’t read it in a year and a half. This is the first reread where I think the edit has actually damaged the book. I went from 122k to 109k and that seems to have stripped some of the flow and life. Understand, we’re talking about a first draft that came in around 150k, which was definitely bloated and in need of cutting. But I think now that 122k version may actually have been pretty tight. The last edit cut into bone.

Certain parts of the manuscript are better for that cutting, but other parts have a disjointed, lifeless feel. I’m considering going back to the the non-eviscerated versions of those scenes/chapters.

Some books can be cut down to bone and still retain life, but not all. I recently read a novel by an author I love. Her series tend to be magically imaginative and inventive, and her books are usually big. It doesn’t matter. I love being in them no matter how long they take to read. But she’s not on the bestseller lists, not quite, and I’ll bet you anything her publisher started blanching at those big manuscripts. I say that because the current book, part of a series I’ve loved as much as the author’s other books, is much shorter than previous ones. Throughout the reading, it felt incomplete to me, missing beats, wanting something that kept slipping through the fingers–cut to the bone and unable to quite articulate itself as those bones clattered along. A large part of the life had been taken away. I intuited that it had once been there, but no more.

In the current publishing climate, this is happening quite a lot to midlist writers. Even to some bestsellers, I hear. It’s a dirty, crying shame. These are half-books, not allowed to be what they naturally are. E-books, in the other hand, don’t have to be as skinny as paper books to “turn a profit.” (Though, don’t get me started on shaky publishing accounting. Better you should read this post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.) (Thanks, safewrite, for the link.)

E-books don’t care if you go a little long. Which is not to say they shouldn’t be edited and made as tight and crisp as possible, but you don’t have to kill them in the process. They don’t have to rattle along like a defleshed skeleton struggling to keep itself in one piece.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Comments

[frigg.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I always thought e-books had to be short, but then I've never studied the market thoroughly, so I don't know where I got that idea from.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

I'd refer you to this post (http://jo-graham.livejournal.com/154515.html)by Jo Graham.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

Sounds like e-publishing could be the way to go, especially for those who have a name in the book world already. I have been eyeing a Danish online bookstore with an e-pub feature myself, it's free and the author percentage is good, but ideally I would go both traditional and e-pub.

...and of course it would require that I actually write more than just one novel in Danish. :p

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

lol--diversity is the name of the game.

And I would love to go traditional. I'm just eying my limited time resources right now and trying to figure out what would work best for me.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Maybe you need to go back to the 122K manuscript and do that edit again, keeping those things that got stripped away while making those changes you actually liked. Easier (and probably less mind-boggling) than trying to reinsert them.

Or maybe that's what you'd planned on, anyway. :)

[darkspires.livejournal.com]

I recently did a savage pruning of one of mine and am now having to add stuff back in. I brutalized it. Sigh.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

You know, I think the tendency to keep going, keep cutting is hard to resist, especially since all the market forces push us in that direction. I think sometimes we almost have to ruin a book before we can pull back and say too much. This isn't the first time I've cut too much.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

::sigh:: Yes, that would probably be more sensible. I like the first three chapters quite well. I may do that from 4 on. It all seems rather daunting, but at least I'm keeping my hand in.