Editing is Hard
Got some positive news on the novel front. It looks likely that I will have an agent, once I finish a full front-to-back edit of the book, cutting the length by a good 5-10% and sanding down some sharp burrs.
I’m trying not to think about it, because thinking about it makes me think about selling the book, and thinking about selling the book makes me think about selling the trilogy, and thinking about selling the trilogy makes me think about quitting my job and writing professionally, and thinking about quitting my job and writing professionally makes it REALLY hard to get my ass up and commute into the city to sit in a cubicle and send e-mails all day.
Cause really. That’s all I fucking do.
So it’s best not to think about it at all, even as I hurry to get the book done and off my plate by my birthday next month. I took a couple of days off this week to work on it, and can take a couple more if need be. I am not quite halfway through, and have already cut the book by 7% through careful wordsmithing. Even with the stuff I plan to add, I think a 5% overall reduction easily attainable.
But it’s fucking hard. Editing line by line, paring and rewriting to find more ecnomical ways of saying things without reducing the impact, is a miserable, tedious, arduous task. I hate it. Even when I have the whole day off for no other purpose, I find reasons to procrastinate. Spent a good chunk of the week installing a new hard drive on my computer to backup all my stuff and, like, hold more porn and whatnot. Wasted countless hours on that I could have spent writing.
So far, the most pages I’ve edited in a single day is 30. Pathetic, I know, but it is mind-numbing.
The upside is that if I can edit 15 pages a day for the next 22 days, I will be able to hand it over to the agent on my birthday and be free to get guiltlessly drunk off my ass.
Can’t wait!