cutting a sentence won't make you bleed

     As you know I've been working on a book the past 18 months. This has kept my creative juices flowing in a distinct direction and I have not written anything "new" in a while. I've done prompts here and there with the EPIC writer's group I and my friend/editor/co-conspirator, Patty, created a year and a half ago. But as far as new material, my brain has been lacking. My mind is focused almost entirely on the world in my book. 

December 31st, 2012 my resolution was to complete the first draft of a novel by December 31st, 2013. I met that deadline with mere hours to spare and a string of sanity left. My fiance bore witness to the tears that accompanied the last sentence of my book. The final tally was 349 pages and 114 thousand words. This was much longer than it should have been. Earlier in the year (2013) I did research to define the average word total a young adult novel should be. (Publishers judge a book by words not by pages). While I found a report that gave me an average of 100k words for the best selling YA novels of the past decade, I failed to take in to a count that these were already established authors. 

     Not a peon like me who has yet to sell a novel.

     Publishers will most likely not want to risk an expensive publishing on a newbie who can't guarantee sales.

     Like me.

     After taking a month break from my book this past January, I dug in and began cutting. I tried this only days after finishing but it was as painful as if attempting to sever my own limb. I was too emotionally attached. 

     Word of advice: give yourself plenty of time to cut the umbilical cord before sending your child into the world.

     The new goal is to get as close to 90k words as possible. After five months of rigorous editing I've managed to get down to 95k words. And I'm not finished.

     My fiance jokes every time I tell him my new word total, "are you writing a book or deleting one?" It's part of the process, I tell him. Every word I erase, every sentence I move or re-imagine makes my story more precise and clear.

     Currently I am working on my fifth run through of the manuscript. Each time I look for something different. One might think (and I certainly did feel this way in January) that if I found a mistake that I was a terrible writer. But I've since realized that it is quite the contrary. When I find something to revise, I am bettering my work. Each delete is an opportunity to improve the quality of my writing.

     As I keep reminding myself, Everything stinks until it's finished.

     So when my book ends up 20k+ words shorter than my original draft I will delight in the fact I am 20k words closer to a clearer delivery of my story.

     No one wants to read in 20 pages what they could get in 10.

     That is where I am right now. I am working on my last revision before I hand it over to my trusty editor, Patty. It's scary, sure, but like my book, I'm a work in progress as a writer and I want to constantly improve my craft.

     Hopefully in the end, it will all be worth it.

     So keep calm and write on!