Trimming the verbage
Well, from a ‘feeling good about yourself’ point of view, this weekend has been a good one. It’s the first time in ages I’ve been to the gym on two consecutive days, and for the first time in more weeks than I’d care to remember I had a good session at adding words to the stagnating novel, in spite of the fact I’d vowed to have a Mac-free weekend.
Blame the crappy weather.
Actually, that’s not entirely fair - the sun was so bright coming in through the window yesterday morning that it set off my solar powered radio.
Book-wise, I was working on style things mainly - trimming out some of the flab and tightening up the loose sentences that had slipped in when I wasn’t concentrating. If anything that probably means the overall word-count has gone down, but the opening chapter is looking better for it.
I think I’m going to have to be rather more ruthless with the cutting, though. I printed out chapter one for the first time ever, and it ran to 47 pages of A4. It’s 28,488 words. That’s way too long. That should be about a quarter of my story line, really, so I’m going to have to do some very strict rationing.
It’s been a sociable weekend. Dinner last night with Trevor and Jon and the cats, then bumped into Steve’s Challenge and the Midnight Weatherman at the gym and stood gassing when I should really have been running for a sauna before it closed.
Still, it keeps me up to date with the local gossip.
If you liked that post, then try these...
End of the season on December 21st, 2004
Crotch beaver on January 10th, 2003
Sarfend seefrunt on February 25th, 2007
Desk warming on November 20th, 2001
Pay day on April 26th, 2002
March 15th, 2004 at 9:54 am
47 pages of A4?! That must be over 100 pages of paperback book size.
I have just finished Graham Swift’s The Light of Day (awful style of writing, I won’t touch one of his books again). Some of his chapters are just 4 paragraphs (one page) long.
Currently I am reading a shortlisted 2003 Booker prize book by Zoe Heller ‘Notes on a Scandal’ and I can’t put it down. It’s 239 pages. How long do you think your novel will be in comparison?
March 15th, 2004 at 11:14 am
Your novel is going to be one of those thick ones, like White Teeth and Catch 22, isn’t it? (Granted though that Catch 22 is full of repetitions upon repetitions, assuming your novel is not.)
March 15th, 2004 at 7:12 pm
The way it’s going it seems more like J.K.Rowling’s, Harry Potter and The Order of the Pheonix - a 766 page handbag seem splitter.
March 17th, 2004 at 2:21 pm
Yes - I think it’s going to be a long one, but I really do have to edit it down a bit. It’s up to about 130 or so pages of A4 in total - the 47 page bit I printed was just the first chapter.