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Extreme Editing
I just slashed more than 10,000 words from my novel draft. Boy did that hurt.
That makes over 80,000 words cut since January. I started with one novel at 50k and the other at 185k and they're both now sitting at a hair above 100k.
The 185k book (Lethe) was drafted when I was an oblivious practitioner of loggorrhea (via over-description and ultra-petty minute action).
In revising I came across repeated scenes, and didn't cut just one of them, I cut both.
Painful work, but I think the end result will be much more readable. The loss of detail will also make it a bit more mysterious, though hopefully not too cryptic.
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