Slash and burn accomplished

Only other writers will appreciate this. Please, break out the bubbly.

I've completed the first pass of a major revision. This means I redlined the entire manuscript. That's 121,000 words, and over 500 printed pages.

There were some deaths and other challenges along the way, but I kept working on this manuscript throughout.

Now the best part. I was merciless in deleting anything and everything that didn't buzz. I knew I'd do this when I fleshed out the 120k words. But I thought I'd eventually cut much more.

Only 40k got omitted; I have a solid 80k I'm happy with. Now the really fun part I've been living for. I know what I have, what I want, where I'm going. I get to make it so.

:ack

:cheer

Great news, Gala!

Now you can come over to my place and do my ms... :ack

(Just kidding. I think.)

Excellent!!

Doesn't it feel great? :snoopy

Way to go, Gala! arty

red pen

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Now you can come over to my place and do my ms... <hr></blockquote>

I've taken the red pen to pleny of manuscripts, not all my own. I can be as merciless as you like, but in a very nice way.

Ditto with pencil, or green pen to calm you down.

<img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/image/posticons/pi_geek.gif" />

Today I re-orged the order of my 53 scenes. That wasn't as easy as the red pen, but satisfying nonetheless.

When I got to this stage on my first novel, I decided I didn't want to work on it any more. Always a relief to know the work gets to live.