Sweeping Up the Verbal Dust Bunnies

Revisions of the Music Novel have reached the next stage, which is the always painful make-the-damn-thing-shorter stage. Jen embarked on that task while Kent finished up a few straggling critique comments, and now we’re both on the hunt for excess verbiage.

We won’t belabor the challenges of killing our darlings, or debate optimum word counts. The book will be better when it’s shorter, period. A concise telling produces a more concentrated experience.

So, much as we’d love to make excuses and not make cuts, this is where we are.

Jen’s head start on the winnowing meant we had a choice about where Kent would jump in. There being two of us, this is potentially a chance to get something done in half the time by divvying it up. However, so far we’re not doing it that way. Kent started at the top, hitting stuff Jen had already been through.

Initially we assumed this would be a sort of gut-check only, but Kent was able to find an appreciable number of extra words still in the first chapter so we’re going to keep moving in this manner until we run into a reason not to. Although unexpected, the outcome does make sense. The first editor takes care of the bulky stuff, exposing the next layer for her partner. Like moving the sofa out of the way to sweep behind it.

Efficient teamwork isn’t always about maximizing bandwidth. Sometimes an approach that looks redundant at a glance can turn out to produce much stronger results and save you time in the long run.