After almost three months of intense revisions on Finders Keepers, let me say this:
[i]FINALLY![/i]
As I noted in some of my previous blogs (Jan. 19, Dec. 26), I?ve been cutting, tweaking, pruning, dicing, slicing, editing, re-editing, re-re-editing and re-re-re-editing Finders Keepers to get it as lean and mean as possible for the wonderful world of publishing. Well, that time has come.
I?m proud to say that I?ve made my last edit (thank God) and that the most up-to-date versioAfter almost three months of intense revisions on Finders Keepers, let me say this:
[i]FINALLY![/i]
As I noted in some of my previous blogs (Jan. 19, Dec. 26), I?ve been cutting, tweaking, pruning, dicing, slicing, editing, re-editing, re-re-editing and re-re-re-editing Finders Keepers to get it as lean and mean as possible for the wonderful world of publishing. Well, that time has come.
I?m proud to say that I?ve made my last edit (thank God) and that the most up-to-date version of Finders Keepers is now in the mail to the agent I?ve been talking about.
And as of today, I’ve got a shiny new manuscript ready to send to the agent I’ve been talking to. She’s waiting to receive this bad boy, which will go in the mail tomorrow.
But for now, I want to do a little recapping. When I started this campaign of editing madness, my manuscript came in at 128,368 words and 544 pages, which, as I?ve noted before, was a bit on the long side. Well, after many, many, many, many, many rounds of editing, Finders Keepers is now a mean and lean 103,503 words and 420 pages.
Let?s check out that progress in grid form:
Original Word Count: 128,368
Final Word Count: 103,503
Original Page Count: 544
Final Page Count: 420
Applying a little more math, here’s some additional analysis.
Total Words Cut: 24,873
Total Pages Cut: 120
All told that means I cut 25,000 words?twenty-five thousand?and 120 pages. Honestly, I didn?t think I could do it and keep the story fully intact. And I?m proud to say that, not only did I get there, but I did so without sacrificing the story, without cutting any chapters, characters, plot points or humor. Finders Keepers is as wild and goofy and fun as ever.
What it did take was about a bazillion little snips that ultimately added up to something significant. Tweak after tweak after tweak.
Having Finders Keepers this sizzling and lean only helps me. Shorter is almost always better, and Finders Keepers is certainly better than ever, which really jazzes me up, as the buzz from the earlier, longer versions was pretty darn good too!
So now that I?ve got this butt-kickin? manuscript circulating in its best form ever, the odds of it getting picked up sooner rather than later have only increased.
These past few months were a real triumph for me. Not just in regard to Finders Keepers, but to me as a writer. The time I spent really forced me to step up my game, to become even more disciplined and focused than ever. And since I?ve got about another dozen books just circulating in my brain, ready to come out, that?s going to be good news indeed.
Post edited by: rcolchamiro, at: 2008/02/23 06:07
