WORD Challenge = 23 pages edited, 5 paper edited
I’m finally reaching the point where I’m fairly certain I’ll achieve my WORD goals and get this ms edit finished. That’s such a huge relief to me. Even better is the fact that I’ve written a few new scenes and I just love them! I have more to write, since I’ve cut so much that I’m now 16 pages shy of my stated word count, but it shouldn’t be hard and I’m looking forward to replacing redundant and boring information with fresh, witty scenes.
I remember when I first looked at this ms just a few weeks ago. The task seemed daunting and for three days I despaired of ever finishing it. Jees, I didn’t even know where to begin! 
It just seemed such a monumental task to revise a 500-something page manuscript that had a lot of craft issues. Now I’m so glad I didn’t get discouraged. I’d forgotten how much I liked the story and the characters.
One of the mistakes I made the first time around was looking ahead to future books. I weaved in too much description and secondary plots to build up anticipation for the two books I have planned to follow this one. By refocusing my attention to the story at hand, I sped up the pacing and developed the characters more. I’m much happier with the story now and when it leaves my hands, I’ll be a lot more confident about it. And the secondary characters are still so much fun, I’m certain readers will ask about them anyway. 
Oh and my son said a funny today. I was tucking him into bed and he asked me to leave the video on. “Just in case I get bored sleeping.” 
Yeah that you’re so close!:smile: I’m farther along than I’d like to be but I’m stubborn and I want a damn button:wink:
Besides, I work better under pressure.:twisted:
And you can always weave more secondary character stuff back in later…I’m in the same quandry with my trilogy.
on November 23rd, 2004 at 4:47 pm