Valor of the Healer

This being what I pulled off in editing land last night before I went to bed, too bleary to bother to make a post. I knocked a couple hundred more words out of Chapter 22, and started putting a dent in 23; all in all, a decent night’s work!

As expected, I was able to tighten up the entire sequence where Julian and Faanshi and the elves break into the abbey; I think that bit alone was good for a thousand words or so. I sacrificed some decent enough descriptions, but in the name of brevity and pacing, this close to the end, I think it’s for the best.

Now into 23, which is the big climax where Super Annie appears to wreak havoc. Not sure yet how many more words I’ll be able to yoink out of here. But today, I shall give it a go. About 2,900 more words to go!

Edited last night: -330
Chapter 22 revised total: 3,931
Chapter 23 revised total: 5,060
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 119,414

I must have eaten my Editor Wheaties for breakfast this morning. (Which is funny, because I could have sworn I had a ham and cheese bagel sandwich.) I have just trimmed the hell out of Chapter 22, focusing on the sequence where Faanshi, Julian, and the elves scout out the abbey. I decided there was actually quite a bit of cruft verbiage there, and no real need to linger on describing ‘yeah, it’s twilight, the abbey’s busy having vespers, nobody’s out, they get to break into the postern gate because inexperienced Faanshi and one-handed Julian aren’t going to climb over a wall’. ‘Cause seriously, the good stuff? That’s getting them inside to Kestar.

Anyway, I am suddenly quite a bit closer to the 20K goal after all, and Chapter 22 has had about 1,100 words yoinked out of it. Here are last night’s and tonight’s stats.

Edited last night: -314
Edited tonight: -902
Chapter 22 revised total: 4,144
Chapter 23 revised total: 5,177
Chapter 24 revised total: 6,593
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 119,744

So I started into more of Chapter 22 tonight, only to discover that actually, re-reading it, I’m pretty happy with the bulk of it. I’ve only succeeded in taking out another 110 or so words tonight.

I therefore went on through Chapter 23 and Chapter 24, and came to much the same conclusion. I’m really rather lacking on too many extraneous words in these chapters. I’m going to make another pass through both of them over the next few nights, but it’s seeming like I may be closer to the end of this draft than I thought. I may not quite hit the 20K, but if I can pull the total word count down under 120K, I think I’ll be happy with that.

Stay tuned for further details. I’ll post an actual number update tomorrow night.

Chapter 22 edits are now underway, and I’ve taken out nearly 170 words. Very close to dipping down under the 120K mark, which is a nice milestone to have so near. I’m pretty sure I won’t need to do anything but word count reduction here–and I’m thinking that the whole sequence where Faanshi, Julian, and the elves break into the abbey can be tightened significantly. Don’t know if I’ll be able to hit a full K out of this chapter, but I’ll give it a college try.

Stopping reasonably early tonight though on account of trying to get caught up on sleep. Better for the writing braincells thattaway.

Edited tonight: -168
Chapter 22 revised total: 5,156
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 120,960

I have successfully beaten 1,000 words out of Chapter 21! And man, this entire chapter was an exercise in asking myself really difficult questions about whether many sentences if not entire paragraphs really, really needed to be there.

I think I’ll call it a wrap on this chapter then, and move on to Chapter 22 tomorrow night. By my running tally I need to kill about another 4,600 words but I’ll be happy with a rough estimate of 4K.

Three chapters to go and the epilogue. I’m getting there.

Edited tonight: -91
Chapter 21 revised total: 5,891
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,128

Yeah yeah yeah I know, technically this is supposed to be Day 4. But had a birthday dinner last night, and by the time I got home I was too full of tasty food and b00zah0l to muster enough brain for editing, what can I say?

So I edited today instead, and succeeded in beating Chapter 21 down under 6,000 words. I’ve killed about 900 words in it all told, and could probably stand to kill another hundred to be on track with the goal of reading 117K by the end of the book. I will therefore see if I can kill another hundred in it tomorrow before I move on to Chapter 22!

Edited today and tonight: -242
Chapter 21 revised total: 5,982
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,219

I think last night’s estimate was about right: turns out I killed 260 words out of Chapter 21 tonight. The page count is down to 26, but the 26th page is really only half a page, and with judicious pruning I might be able to kill the rest of that page too. We’ll see tomorrow night.

In addition to just general verbiage reduction, I found at least a couple more places where I could eliminate sentences that were not absolutely critical to the action. It’ll be amusing to me at some point to compare my style in the first draft of this thing with my style in the fourth.

Edited tonight: -260
Chapter 21 revised total: 6,224
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 121,461