Hey guys, welcome back! Hope the fall season has so far been treating you well. Been both a sunny and a stormy one here in the Northeast, but that is the beauty of this time of the year here.
Before I get into the meat of this post, just before I started writing this, I saw that one of my all time favorite authors reposted my thoughts on her latest book and to say I’m fan girling hard is an understatement. The book, The Me I Used to Be is a beautiful story of friendship, life not turning out how you thought it would and one woman’s journey of living with early onset dementia. I’ve called it a ‘soul book’ because it truly gets inside of you and doesn’t let go. I have it listed in my Amazon storefront and will link to it below. (Or see the link on my sidebar here on the site.)
Just a quick note, as you read this post, you’ll notice I will be using actual numbers instead of spelling them out. (10 instead of ten.) This is on purpose.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been back to working hard on editing my manuscript. The biggest hurdle I currently have is bringing down my word count. The average novel these days is about 100,000 words. Some more, some less. My first draft was close to 450,000. In other words, I basically wrote 4 books in 1.
The task at hand now is to figure out which of these words are staying in the 1st book. I say 1st because I believe now that a sequel needs to happen.
I edit 10 chapters at a time. Several chapters were over 55,000 words. The latest I just edited was over 89,000. That 10 chapter chunk was a whole book within itself. I am proud to say that I was able to cut 1104 words after having cut 2058 in the previous edits. So yes, the good news is that I am making some progress.
The last round of edits of the full drafts, I was able to get my word count down near the 349,000 mark which makes me very happy. But just reminds me of how much work there is still to go.
I’ve said before that I ramble when I write just like I do when I talk. The biggest tip that hit me where I live and has been helping me to make big cuts is “don’t over explain.” While it sounds so simple, sometimes it’s the simple things we don’t think about and I wish I had seen that sooner.
While going through this particular draft, I’ve been able to cut full paragraphs, huge amounts of text that I wish I had thought to cut so much earlier. But that’s the nature of the process, right? We learn as we go.
As I’ve been rereading this draft, I’ve been talking a lot to my screen. (Thankfully, something many authors do so I don’t feel like I’m completely crazy.) I yell at myself, “you DON’T need that!” Cut. Cut. Cut.
I started rewriting so much which I’ve missed. After all, while you edit, you may change a word here and there but the writing itself is mostly finished and frankly, I miss the writing part of the book.
I’ve found that a great way to rework a rambling paragraph is to think in terms of a social post. Think Twitter. (I will never call it ‘x’.) You are relegated to a certain number of characters in order to post, right? You still need to get your point across. Look at what you’ve written on a page and think to yourself, ‘if I was to post this paragraph, I wouldn’t be able to say all of this. How can I reword it?’ I know that may sound odd, but hey, it works for me! By doing this, I’ve reworked so much and soon, noticed that the word count has been going down more and more.
That’s not to say it’s been flowing that great for each 10 chapter chunk! I worked on 2 sections for weeks and when I was done with each 1, in the end, I had accidentally added words. To say that was deflating is an understatement. However, that is why we keep reading our work over and over. Each time finds more places to cut, more ways to get the point across and hell, even more typos you may have missed the 1st 30 times around!
There is still so much to be done before I can submit the manuscript anywhere. When I’m not working on it, I continue to research agents and houses that I think would be a good fit to publish it. I’ve thought about going the indie route, this way there would be no hard and fast rule of a word count limit…but that is even more work in the long run. Meaning, if I go the self publishing route, it is up to me for all the marketing, selling and just hoping for a sale while I could be working on another book. If I go the traditional way, much of that work is done by them. Not all, I’m not that naive. I know I’d still have to work the marketing angle a bit myself which I’m fine with as that is what I did in a previous existence. It just wouldn’t all fall on me. It would come at a cost, as the more people involved, the more that get a piece of the profit. I understand that. But it’s like having an Etsy shop over a private shop. Etsy takes a ton in fees, but they get the traffic. If you have a personal shop, you get the money but have to find ways to have shoppers find you. Please understand, I don’t write for money, I write for the love of it, but yes, a more steady income would be nice.
Ironically as I’m sitting here writing this, an ad just came up for our local news that said they are looking into the pitfalls of self-publishing. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is!
Now that I have proved the point of what ‘over explaining’ is by literally over explaining all of this, you get what my issues are. As I write, as I edit, as I cut, the numbers are forever hanging over my head. I need to cut more to submit. I need to cut more to publish. Cutting affects the story and I don’t want to lose any of it. Having said that, I’m learning more and more that cutting text doesn’t have to affect the story. In fact, it can make it stronger. It just needs to be streamlined and more fluid than pages of ramblings…much like this post. 🙂
And that is where I’m leaving you for today. Thank you for putting up with me. I know that this may have gone off the rails in a few places, but this site is as much about sharing my journey as it is a kind of therapy for me. I just thank you for sticking with it and hope that you get something out of it for whatever journey you are also going on. Sometimes just knowing that someone else is going through the same thing is just as important as trying to deal with it yourself.
Until next time…Cheers!
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To follow me on socials, Amazon storefront (including finding the book The Me I Used to Be that I mentioned above as well as other Kristan Higgins books), click: HERE
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Already looking to shop for gift giving season? I have two other ways to shop with me. For vintage and estate jewelry, you can find my eBay listings: HERE
For my other shops featuring my own designs on stickers, shirts, cards, home decor and more, click: HERE
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If you’ve gotten this far, I thank you and hope you’ll come back for more! See you soon. 🙂
