{"id":6187,"date":"2008-12-02T02:39:14","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T08:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2008\/12\/02\/second_draft_finished\/"},"modified":"2017-01-16T14:48:03","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T20:48:03","slug":"second_draft_finished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2008\/12\/02\/second_draft_finished\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Draft Finished!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>As of this weekend, I have finished draft #2<\/strong> of my first novel, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/epictales.org\/HammerAndStone.htm\">Merlin&#8217;s Blade<\/a><\/strong>, which is book one of the <strong>Merlin Spiral<\/strong> series.<\/p>\n<p>My goal was to cut it down as close as I could to 100,000 words.  Having begun at 154,000 words, that goal was doubtful. If I had gotten it down to 110,000 words, I would have been <em>very<\/em> pleased.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The truth of the matter is that I only made it to 120,000. <\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>As my editing progressed, I found <em>my writing had improved<\/em> and there was less to cut.  Not a bad problem, per se, but still I had hoped to cut more.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Also, the action heated up near the end<\/strong>, and there was less and less that could be removed! <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/epictales.org\/HammerAndStone.htm\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MerlynSpiral_Medium32.jpg?w=1200\" alt=\"Merlin's Blade, Book 1 of the Merlin Spiral\" title=\"Merlin's Blade, Book 1 of the Merlin Spiral\" class=\"goright\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>In fact, whereas I normally was removing 20% minimum<\/strong> from every chapter, my last five chapters went like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chapter 39 &mdash; Removed 4%<\/li>\n<li>Chapter 40 &mdash; Removed 3%<\/li>\n<li>Chapter 41 &mdash; Removed 2%<\/li>\n<li>Chapter 42 &mdash; Removed 1%<\/li>\n<li>Epilogue   &mdash; Removed 0%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Oh well!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Either way, <strong>I did remove over 30,000 words<\/strong>, and averaged around 20% per chapter.  <\/p>\n<p>Not bad, but <strong>the problem is that<\/strong>, according to one agent&#8217;s e-mail, a novel by a new author with <strong>120,000 words will &#8220;cause many publishers to flinch&#8221;<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Ouch!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am whacking my brain (yes, I said whacking) to see if there is any major surgery that can be done.  Hmmm&#8230; <\/p>\n<p><strong>Send a prayer up for the wisdom of my scalpel!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Views: 5<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nAs of this weekend, I have finished draft #2 of my first novel, Merlin&#8217;s Blade, which is book one of&hellip;\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2008\/12\/02\/second_draft_finished\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Second Draft Finished!&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,14,46,9,51,28,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-merlin-spiral","category-1-merlins-blade","category-agents","category-announcements","category-editing-fiction","category-on-writing-fiction","category-progress-reports","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MerlynSpiral_Medium33.jpg?fit=320%2C160","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1BN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6187"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6808,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187\/revisions\/6808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}