Slash and burn

After pumping out about 7k words on book 2 yesterday, I came to a terrible realization …

… Nearly 1k of those words were completely unnecessary. Totally extraneous. Useless to the plot. Fuck.

Yeah, I had to cut it all, and now I’m scrambling to find words to fit in the blank that will advance the plot and be of some use to the story.

It happens to even the best of writers. I think. I guess. I mean, I can only hope. I wonder if Patricia Briggs or Darynda Jones have this kind of problem. If they did, it would sure make me feel better about my own writing.

As it is I’m feeling kind of meh about what I’ve written so far on book 2, even though I’m nearly 20 chapters in. I’m definitely going to need to go back in revisions and pump it up. Add some flavor, some depth. Which I guess is also normal. I hope. Anyway, novels take work. They don’t just magically appear when keys are pressed by the writer. Hard work, frustration, blood-sweat-tears kind of stuff. Not to mention the emotional rollercoaster. You get caught up in your own story, you feel for your characters (even as you torture them), and you kick yourself every time you screw the story up.

Like when you write 1k unnecessary words.

It’s moving along, though, and I’m hoping to be done with the first draft by the end of the year. Still waiting on a few critiques from some people on book 1 as well as my first edit, then it’s back to work on that one. Can I get book 1 polished and submitted to publishers by the end of the year? We’ll see. Once again, I have hope. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to do it in the timetable I want. The year before last, when I was writing Whispers of Death I had an awesome critique group that read a few chapters at a time for me, providing valuable feedback in exchange for my own feedback on their works. It worked out great, but the group has fizzled and been inactive for quite some time. Sad, but life happens.

Guess I should get back to filling in that 1k-word gap. Tally-ho! (Or something)

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