Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Slash and Burn

So, first night of the new routine seemed to go okay.  Little Boy went to bed late, so I only got a solid hour of work done.  Still, for a change, I feel like I actually made some progress.

I made it through the first 1/3 of the MS (chapters 1-11) in my slash-and-burn rampage.

According to LSB (Liquid Story Binder) I cut almost 2600 words tonight.  (I've done a little bit previously, too.)  The overall MS is at 107,250.  So I'm down a total of 5K or so, and I've got another 12K at least to get down to my target of 95K.  Some of that will come in the next few nights as I cut big scenes and chunks of scenes (some are hard to part with, but I have to admit to myself they're more for me than for the story).  Other wordage will evaporate as I get into the nitty-gritty revisions, scene-by-scene.  Right now it's the broad-stroke stuff, because I'll get hung up in the little details if I try to go in and just take out lines or paragraphs.

I will also have new stuff to write, at some point.  But I think after I get all this extraneous stuff cut, it will be a big catch-up plotting/organizing streak, and then we'll see where I am in the revisions workshop - I really do plan to blog about that, someday - and hopefully I'll manage to keep pace.

In other news, I'm probably going to Fergus again this year!  My friend Jodi *waves* is also somewhat obsessed with Scotland and we're planning a "girls' weekend out" road trip.  Fun times.

Now I'm for bed.  Staff meeting at 8 am tomorrow.

1 comment:

Deniz Bevan said...

I wish I had as many words as you; I could do a slash and burn of my own. Unfortunately, what I need are constant edits/re-writes/fine tunes which I find very draining - for my ego! I keep thinking "I suck I suck" instead of feeling the way Jo suggested on her blog - when you haven't looked at the MS in a while, she says it's fun to take something written in just the way you would write it, and all you have to do is *edit*. Unfortunately I get a kick out of editing everyone else's stuff but I'm too self-conscious about my own... Waa! I'm gkad your method is working for you!
(Slash and Burn is a song by the Manic Street Preachers :-))