writing update

So anyway...

News from the wonderful world of Trying To Become a Published Novelist:

Well, I have completed my first Destructively Insane Short-sighted Game of Unholy Senseless Truncation (DISGUST). By eliminating three entire storylines, I have taken my novel from 150,000 words to 133,000 words, which of course is still way too freaking long. One character is all but gone now, and the book is the poorer for it. Two characters no longer fall in love; that's fine, for the book can handle that without too much loss and I had already been thinking about that anyway. But one character's backstory's disappearance hurts a lot: it set up a growth for her that basically turned her into one of the book's main characters, and without it she now slips deeply into the background.

I have also taken the hatchet to the specific political scenes. As much flavor as they added to the book, I figured that they ultimately were going to have to go in any edit that chopped the book down close to 75,000 words, so why not just do it now? There is still the national political story--the book's situation depends upon that--but specific scenes are fewer and mostly involve the kids directly instead of behind the scenes stuff.

Still, I need to cut far more if I am to bring this thing in under 80K. Basically, I need to cut 1/3 of all remaining words. And I need to do that without the direct truncation or elimination of any major aspects. So...

It is time to pick up the Insane World's (most) Extreme Edit Pen. (I WEEP)

Oh, there is another piece of news:

The novel has had an official title change!

I've been looking all along for a better title than Parkland, and I have finally found one. I am going to call it Abomination, a title that will pick up a word used several times in the text, an event that occurs in it, and (one would hope) the reader's reaction to that event.

So that happened. Until next time...