Well, I did finish the book. And I finished it on Tuesday, the day after I posted that last blog. Now, it’s Friday, and I have finished typing the thing in. And it is huge. Massive. Okay, let’s face it, the book is absolutely obese.
I have a passing acquaintance with obesity, being mumbledy-something pounds overweight myself (but I have lost enough finally to be TWO pants-sizes down from my peak). However, I don’t think walks to the post office, then around the park, past the abandoned saddle factory and the gray horse in his vacant lot will do a whole lot for this book.
I’m totally embarrassed by my book’s condition, as well. It’s not as if I didn’t have plenty of room to get the story in. I believe I mentioned before that Luna fantasies can be up to 150,000 words. I took The Eternal Rose up to 178,600 frickin’ words. That’s 714 cotton-picking pages. This means I now have to cut out 114 pages.
So, after the obvious scenes I already know can go, and all the extraneous chitchat I always seem to put in, I’m going to really have to gut it up and hack away, I guess.
Wish me luck.
Good luck on the edits! I know how painful those can be–on the second book of my as-yet-upublished trilogy, my agent told me that I had to do some major cutting. I was at about 149,000 words and he told me to shoot for 125,000. URK! That was painful. I think I ended up with about 128,000 words of really tight prose and a better book to boot, but I still wish I could have had the 150,000. Come to think of it, I don’t think we’ve marketed to Luna yet….
Thanks for the email about the Barbed Rose. I’m looking forward to it!
-Kathy Hurley
It’s tough to cut sometimes–but I’m one of those who finds it easier to cut than to add. Good luck at Luna!