Status Report
Sep. 12th, 2004 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonHere's my weekly report on The Rewrite That Will Not Die 2: The Winnowing:
Chapters completed: 21
Revised page count: 599
Revised manual word count: 147,254 (net words cut 1966)
Revised Word line count with a zero stuck on the end word count: 146,650 (net words cut 1640)
I spent most of the week battling with chapters 17 and 18. They needed more than just winnowing, they needed more rewriting. So I did. It was a hard slog. Some added text balanced out text cut and slowed the whole winnowing process down, but I feel better about these chapters now. I still don't think they're quite there, but I've gone as far as I can go with them at this juncture, from my current perspective. It's time to release them back into the wild and see if they can fly on their own.
But I feel real good about getting the page count below 600! Yowza! True, it's only 599, but the 600 mark was a real psychological barrier. Now getting this monster down to 145k seems eminently feasible, and getting it down to 140k is an outside possibility. I've got 11 chapters and an epilogue to go, so we'll see.
I didn't get any other writing work done, of course, but I did get some good creative noodling done. I thought through some problems with my Dos Lunas/JK novel (a contemporary fantasy), but still have to figure out some major elements there. (Like, for one, why did Ramona hijack the story, what does she want, and do I give in and let her have her say or tell her to shut up.)
A completely new story popped into my brain, tentatively titled, "The Mistress and the Loon." And a completely new voice started talking to me the other night. I'm not at all sure where she fits in, but she does have some interesting things to say. I also did some creative noodling on the story that refuses to let me change its working title. I suppose it would be wrong to write a story called "Barfing Angel"? Yeah, I thought so.
Now, what I really need is to finish this rewrite and the attendant synopsis, et al., and get it out the door so I can turn my energies back to other projects and crits. I'm beginning to loathe this novel—which means it's definitely time to let go.
Chapters completed: 21
Revised page count: 599
Revised manual word count: 147,254 (net words cut 1966)
Revised Word line count with a zero stuck on the end word count: 146,650 (net words cut 1640)
I spent most of the week battling with chapters 17 and 18. They needed more than just winnowing, they needed more rewriting. So I did. It was a hard slog. Some added text balanced out text cut and slowed the whole winnowing process down, but I feel better about these chapters now. I still don't think they're quite there, but I've gone as far as I can go with them at this juncture, from my current perspective. It's time to release them back into the wild and see if they can fly on their own.
But I feel real good about getting the page count below 600! Yowza! True, it's only 599, but the 600 mark was a real psychological barrier. Now getting this monster down to 145k seems eminently feasible, and getting it down to 140k is an outside possibility. I've got 11 chapters and an epilogue to go, so we'll see.
I didn't get any other writing work done, of course, but I did get some good creative noodling done. I thought through some problems with my Dos Lunas/JK novel (a contemporary fantasy), but still have to figure out some major elements there. (Like, for one, why did Ramona hijack the story, what does she want, and do I give in and let her have her say or tell her to shut up.)
A completely new story popped into my brain, tentatively titled, "The Mistress and the Loon." And a completely new voice started talking to me the other night. I'm not at all sure where she fits in, but she does have some interesting things to say. I also did some creative noodling on the story that refuses to let me change its working title. I suppose it would be wrong to write a story called "Barfing Angel"? Yeah, I thought so.
Now, what I really need is to finish this rewrite and the attendant synopsis, et al., and get it out the door so I can turn my energies back to other projects and crits. I'm beginning to loathe this novel—which means it's definitely time to let go.