Romance Novel weblog by Carolyn Jewel

Writer's Diary

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

I'm a Sculptor (Pronounced Artiste)

So, last night as I was reading chapters 16-18 I was bored. Yuck. So I cut a bunch of stuff and had a sort of a glimmer of an idea but wasn't sure what to do about it. Today I cut even more. A sea of red ink, I tell you. Took the Darling Child to soccer practice and since they had a scrimmage tacked on, I had extra time at the OTHER Starbucks, although just to be safe I ordered hot mint tea. While there, I cut all but 3 pages of chapter 18. Fortunately, Chp 17 was kind of long so I did my find a good chapter ending trick and stuck the rest of chapter 18 onto it, then around page 7 started looking for a place that had high tension. Found it on page 8. All the rest went into a new and improved Chapter 18. Then I re-read what I had starting from chapter 16 and it was good. Darn good.

Yes, today I was a sculptor in that I carved away all the hooptedoodle and left only the good parts and then brought other parts into better relief, with a sort of chiaroscuro effect. Only on paper. The 3D shadows and art part happens in your head.

Now I'm home, I have a dirty rotten headache, but the DC has been fed, the laundry is started and I've printed out the new chapters 16-18 and can only pray they hold up they way they did when I was reading them on the laptop. I used to get all depressed about cutting crap, but today, not at all. The crap needs to go, and fast. So it was really easy and painless to do.

Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch