A Painful Painstaking Cut
I’ve been revising an old work, so in many ways not actually ‘writing’ more like re-ordering. Need to make it shorter for my planned market and realised many scenes weren’t necessary to the book as could be used in another, so I had to cut those out. Then as I started editing I realised that the book worked better if I used certain scenes in a different order. When I did that there were even a more scenes I didn’t need. That’s good because I’ve been trying to shorten it but…difficult to actually come to terms with.
It’s been a strange experience. I think many writers tend to hate cutting even a sentence because it’s something they spent time on creating. Cutting it wipes it out of existence, but this made me realise that you really do need to cut sometimes to get a better result. It’s been painful — whole chunks just gone — but liberating as, yes, this is now a better book. Now I just need to edit it (yet again) and make sure it’s all tight and concise enough as well as flowing. Phew!