From the Quote File

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

—Aristotle


Yeah, but they don't like polka music.

That Writing Thing

I suppose I should talk more about that writing thing here, but it's so boring.  No, not other people's writing things, but my own.  Because, basically, I'm just slogging away right now, getting through the heavy revision phase of the second draft.  Not much to report day-to-day except that I'm doing it.  Besides, I'm just not the faithful diarist type. 

However, yesterday I did accomplish something of note:  my word count actually went down.  Yes!  I managed to cut something.  True, it was only about a page and a half worth, but the word count on this beast has been slowly creeping up—which is seriously not a good thing.  That's mostly due, I think, to clarifying and straightening out some very twisted timelines.  I haven't been too worried about cutting this time around because the problems in other areas, in mechanics, seemed larger.  So unless something is clearly superfluous  fat and padding, I give it a reprieve until next time.  Once I have a straighter ms., timeline-wise, backstory-wise, I can worry about the other stuff.  I find that if I try to accomplish too much at one time—take on all monsters in one battle—it can weaken my efforts.  I get a better rewrite if I offset my battles.  So I make one pass to clean up mechanics, followed by another to clean up aesthetics.  Then I sincerely hope it's time to send the sucker out.

This story was a really complicated one in which what happened in the past was just as important as present action because what happened in the past is the root cause and prime motivator for the story.  (Though some may argue with me there.)  And since what happened in the past was often complicated, the timelines, et al., got complicated.  Sometimes overly so.  And sometimes I fell in love with peripheral characters and didn't know when to keep them down to one or two succinct paragraphs; and sometimes letting them have their say illuminated new aspects of the main story.  It's always difficult to walk the line between intrusive tangent and deepening  a story.

But there is no better remedy to "my precious prose" syndrome then to give myself a little space.  Time is the greatest editor of them all.  Things that I wouldn't have dreamed of cutting a year ago now seem perfectly disposable to me.  I doubt I can hack 25k off this beast, but you never know.  Once the cutting starts, sometimes the blood flows freely.

And on that happy metaphor, adieu...

Finished through:   chapter 28

Left to go:  seven chapters  (Groan) (Technically, six chapters plus an epilogue)

Word count: 149,800--ugly, ugly