The Patient is Resting Comfortably

Over the holiday weekend we finished up this round of edits on Son of Music Novel. Son is now over 18,000 words shorter. For those of you who prefer page counts, that’s approximately 50. We removed about 4 chapters worth of words. (!)

As threatened, Jen swung back around to give the beginning a second look. But even with all the cutting blades nicely sharpened, and her critical eye honed, she found fewer than 20 words to cut from each of the first two chapters. That’s about a tenfold drop from what was getting cut during the first pass. So, we’re calling it done (for now). That pace would lead to a not insignificant total over the course of the book. And we will take another trip through, just not right now.

We will leave this project in the recovery room for a while and turn our attention to its littermate, Sibling of Music Novel. That one’s earlier along in its lifecycle. Even though it’s the second in the series, we wrote it last, and there are half-a-dozen brief items we know we want to punch up before we consider it truly complete. Back in January we said 2020 was going to be the year where not much writing got done in the Writing Cave. We’re about to tackle the one little bit on the schedule. It will feel good to stretch different muscles.