Friday, July 28, 2006

Slash & Burn

Apart from playing about on MySpace - oops did I say playing I meant networking! - I've also been polishing Lil to get her nice and sparkly in readiness of submitting to agents.

As I send the witches each chapter (or three or four) as I finish them, I edit along the way taking into consideration their suggestions, and the theory here is at the end - there shouldn't be too much left to tighten, polish and tweak.

Ha-de-ha.

Okay well it is a good theory but doesn't quite work in practice. Especially when the end product comes in several thousand above and beyond what I originally anticipated.

Sooo... I've been cutting. I slashed over half a chapter from the first 40 pages (suggested by brilliant cps) although I did have severe palpitations at the thought (as Amanda and Pat probably remember from that msn chat!) but the beginning is a lot tighter now. While I would have tidied it up during edits, left to my own devices there's no way I would have seen there was so much... how can I put this... waffle?!

Last night I lost a further 8 pages. Great news! By the time I got to THE END today, I'd added another three. Argh! While I was cutting, I was also adding! Bad move. Except the adds were essential! (Honest!)

5 comments:

Sara Hantz said...

Excuse me........... you've ADDED pages. I don't think so.

You better sort this out pronto..... or there will be trouble with a capital T......

Got it????

Amanda Ashby said...

essential were they? Hmmmmm...we shall see!

Christina Phillips said...

I have a cunning plan - I'll convert the font into TNR!!

Or would that be cheating...?

Amanda Ashby said...

most definitely on the cheating side (I like it!)

Sara Hantz said...

Like you need to ask?????