Break out the champagne! We finished our edits on the music novel! Through the enthusiastic use of Weasel-Stomping Boots™ and a take-no-prisoners approach to line editing, we removed almost 17,000 words from our draft.

We mentioned in the past that one reason the word count on this novel is so high is the inclusion of copious side matter. I think the best way to describe the outcome is to say that we have a 150,000 word novel with a 20,000 word novella smeared along the bottom margin.

Jen began the line edits with a scalpel, razoring away a word here, a word there, aiming to remove just ten words per page. As she moved into sections of the manuscript that needed more work, Kent joined her and they broke out their machetes. The carnage was glorious to behold, many darlings were slaughtered, and the end result is much crisper and livelier prose. A writing partner makes the process faster and more bearable.

The official second draft has begun its journey through our critique group, and so far they like it. That means all the hard work was worth it. By removing the problems we know about, we clear away the clutter and allow our critiquers to see any deeper issues we haven’t noticed.