Editing is Magic

This week had an assortment of things needing to be done, including getting #SciFanSat together and scheduled into mid-September. I got that task completed Saturday afternoon, then started working on building a similarly sized buffer for my weekly Ice and Ash and Brownies microfiction serials.

However, that endeavor ended very short of my goal when a good friend that my wife and I hadn’t seen in ten months showed-up in a surprise visit. It was very pleasant (she is extremely supportive of my writing), and we had a lovely dinner, but I didn’t get any further writing done that evening. ;-)

I’d set aside Sunday strictly for Angel, but a technical/computer problem and an early afternoon spent feeling unwell stole some hours away from me. That said, by mid-afternoon my creative engine was running at full steam once more.

I finished the rewording of the short story’s climax, continuing the narrative cleanup and POV unification work I began with it last week. I was up until midnight, and only the last tenth or less of the original draft remains to be edited. I’ve kept vigilant about wordcount creep, and have only added 250 words to the length of the original, with a current total 5,150. I’ve managed this by cutting redundant details and trimming excessive descriptions into stronger, shorter, more pointed sentences while keeping outright additions minimal. This has quickened Angel’s pace, and given me space to add more focus on the characters, which has in turn added more meat to the story.

Things are reading a lot better now, and I’m getting excited about sharing it with betas. It’s a great feeling: Taking something you thought was pretty good a few years ago, seeing its flaws, and then making it better while still telling the original story. Editing is magic. :-)

I do hope most of the others don’t require this much rework, though. Angel is almost the oldest in the batch, however, and received the least beta reading. So I take comfort knowing it’s not typical of most of the pieces I’ll be polishing for publication… and by extension hopefully not setting a precedent.

What remains is to finish rewording the last tenth of Angel and to expand its ending to match my original closing idea. Here is were I think the largest wordcount growth will occur, but I really don’t see what I’ve got planned amounting to more than a few added pages.

Have a great week everyone, and keep writing!

~Jason H. Abbott