Editing

I hope this entry still sounds coherent when my Benadryl wears off. I’ve been suffering a violent allergy attack all day, which for me involves a plethora of violent sneezes in addition to congestion and itchy eyes and nose. The rest of it I can deal with, but the sneezing isn’t helped by Benadryl. Oddly enough, sipping hot buttered rum does help the sneezing. I guess I shouldn’t complain. ;)

It blows my mind how often I use the word “that” in my writing. I know most of the “thats" people use are unnecessary, and I make an effort to cut them out…and yet, as I go back through the printout of my novel, I’m finding a lot of superfluous “thats".

I’m sure everyone’s method for editing is different. Personally I can’t do final edits on a computer screen. I have to print out that puppy and read through line by line. I’m marking out all kinds of unnecessary words, changing awkward phrasing, and slashing out whole sections of the novel that don’t need to be there.

Good thing, since I’m currently at 158K and fantasy novels need to be closer to 120K or so…

I’m actually not too worried. I’ve pinpointed some places where I can cut scenes out or incorporate elements of the scene into another place. Despite being a die-hard plotter, I need to get everything on paper before I know where, exactly, the story got bloated.

I’m enjoying it. I know a lot of people don’t like this stage, but I do. Right now I’m through 167 pages out of 375, and I’ve only been at this a week. I feel it’s going pretty well.

Now if I could just stop sneezing my head off.