180 Thousand Words

By Kathleen Sawisky, esq.

This will be a short post this week because I am now employed and, thusly, no longer have any time for myself.

Every time I start a new job I enter a phase wherein I must learn how to balance work and private life. It is a precarious act and one that always takes me a few weeks to fall into. Usually I start to feel forlorn about something. I miss friends, I miss writing, I can’t remember what my husband looks like. The usual. This time it was something a bit different. A number.

128,766. That’s the number of works currently in my WIP. I hesitate calling it a WIP because it really is a full-fledged manuscript now. It just needs trimming. A… lot of trimming.

Because I’m self-publishing, the number isn’t as vital as it might be if I had an agent or a publisher breathing on the back on my neck. Still, a nearly 130k long novel doesn’t look appealing to anyone. Maybe I could eventually pull a Rowling and work up to a ridiculously long novel, but the The Code: Between Fire and Pines is not the place to start. Ideally it would be around 110k at the most, but that still leaves me with 18k words to cut.

I’ve never denied being a wordy person. The tagline of my own blog very clearly involves the words “Wordy Writer”, and as such I have learned, over the years, how to slice and dice to make myself seem less verbose. But 18k? I don’t know. That’s a lot, even for me.

I’ve played around with the idea of outright cutting certain plot points. I could probably lose around 5k by removing the first few chapter-scenes that involve the character of Angelo. That would mean rewrites to make the circumstances fit. At the end of the day I’d probably only be able to cut 3k, tops. Still, it is tempting.

But then I consider what I love most about my manuscript. I love the intricacies. I love how, at least in Book 1, part of Natalia’s struggle is the rapid pace changes, the strangers, and the fact that she is constantly trying to adjust to a new picture, like a single bead in a rotating kaleidoscope. To lose these entire scenes or characters simply to cut words might very well impact her conflicts and, ultimately, her resolutions. Then again, how do I know for sure? I haven’t cut it and/or rewritten it yet.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go sell books, earn a paycheque, and not die insolvent, struggling for breath underneath a massive pile of empty cans of kidney beans.