Wednesday, August 19, 2009

RiP Wednesday

In case you haven't figured it out yet, it's Wednesday and time for another installment of RiP (revision in progress for the unelightened) Wednesday! Woo-hoo.

Revisions are going well. They're going even better thanks to these handy tips from Rachelle Gardner's post about tightening your manuscript which I blogged about here earlier in the week. Boy, if only I'd had this information sooner.

At this point, I'm on Chapter Eighteen (out of 23), and still have a freak-load of words still to edit out of the manuscript. Big. Dramatic. SIGH! Well, at least I have a really good guideline of where to go next with the revisions. You might also want to check out this post from The Literary Lab by the other Scott (Bailey). It's all about overwritten prose. The comments were great and very lengthy. The thing is, sometimes less is more. A short, concise sentence can sometimes get the point across better than an overly written long sentence.

As I've gone through the revision process, I have begun to delete or reconstruct some of my overly written prose. Yes, I'm guilty. I acknowledge that every now and then, I overwrite. Hey, it happens. I'm a work in progress, ya know, and hopefully, I'll always be a work in progress.

So, on this RiP Wednesday, I still have about 20,000 to 30,000 words to eliminate to get my manuscript into an acceptable word count area. BIG! DRAMATIC! SIGH! PART! DEUX!

S

4 comments:

Angie Ledbetter said...

Good luck with the rake and hoe! And speaking of hoe...come leave an entry for my HAIKU HOEDOWN contest. Cajun Goody Pkg. up for grabs. :)

Tess said...

love the line, 'and hopefully I'll always be a work in progress'.

Me too. Me too.

Unknown said...

Lol- when I first read the title I thought it was RiP because your WiP had died. "Revisions in progress" makes much more sense!

Scott said...

Angie - put my vain attempt at Haiku on your page. : )

Tess - I think the point when we stop learning is the point we should stop writing. : )

Kathleen - No, my WiP hasn't died . . . well, at least not yet! I figure I had to come up with something else since the main 'work' is done, but the tedious revions aren't. : )

S