Cutting back

Today I take off my editor’s cap and put on my writer’s cap. I haven’t had this one on for ages, as you, my dear readers, are well aware. Except for the little doodle I did about my three nights seeing Van in San Francisco, I’ve done no writing in months. But, boy, have I been editing my little heart out.

When I posted Burying the lede back in January, I was whining about getting a 47,000-word section down to 10,000, and since that was my No. 1 and ONLY priority and I couldn’t do two things at the same time, I’d have to put posting to my blog on hold until I got it done.

How about that? Mission accomplished! Well, almost. I’ve got it down to 12,000. I have a pretty good idea where that last 2K are going to get cut, and as usual, I am dreading the process. Just as I have done with every round of cutting.

It never fails; every round is the same. I go through the stages, starting with denial, when I say in my whiniest best, “I’ve cut the book down to the bare bones as it is, and you want more? It simply can’t be done.” Which is accompanied by much foot stomping and griping. And maybe a bit of ranting too. I do that for a while, until I give myself the dreaded talking-to, the one where I say, “We all agree that (in this case) 10K is the goal, and we also all agree that means that something’s got to go. So suck it up and get it done.”

And I always do. You’d think I would have learned by now to go straight to the talking-to part. But, no, sadly not. So here we go again. The cutting room floor is full of my slash and burns. Way back when, my manuscript began at a whopping 221,000 words. Round 1: I got it down to 191,000. Round 2: 154,000. Round 3: 122,000 words. Round 4 is coming up, and the goal is 120,000. How hard can it be?

The cutting has not been in vain. Each round, the book gets shorter — and better. Mind you, it’s an entirely different book now. Well, not entirely — the backbone is still there; it’s the flesh that’s lost the pounds.

My vision for the book, long before I put down word one, was for it to be a saga, a long, lush, sweeping documentary of a year in the life of an Irish girl who meets up with the revolutionary group Young Ireland. In the process of going from 221K to 122K, out went the saga, the lush and the sweeping, all in an effort to get rid of the long. Because as I have been told many, many times now, a publisher will not look at a debut novel with more than 120,000 words. What’s a saga-writing debut author to do? Pay attention, for one. With all the cuts, the book has morphed from a sprawling saga into an action adventure. Less “Gone With The Wind” and more “Cue For Treason.” But, hey, at least it’s still a story of the year in the life of an Irish servant who gets involved with a band of revolutionaries. So there’s that.

Who needs all the drama anyway?

Our musical interlude this morning is from Roxy Music …