Old Manuscript Revival: Day 2, wielding the proverbial axe

(Old Manuscript Revival: Beginning the editing frenzy)

(Old Manuscript Revival: Day 1, diving in headfirst for successful plot surgery) 

I apologize in advance if this post is a bit lackluster... my brain feels like jello :/

I had to spend almost the entire morning today catching up with my review backlog, so I only got in about a half-day's worth of work. As I was reading through the manuscript, I found myself mercilessly slashing away entire pages of text like a soulless executioner. I probably would drive two-years-ago me to tears if I could talk to her/me then, tossing out months of work in a few minutes.

As I continued through the manuscript, I left myself detailed notes for scenes to add in. I didn't bother cleaning up the little sentence to sentence stuff today as I focused myself on strengthening the plot, developing my characters further, and basically just making everything a whole lot more believable. I starred paragraphs that I need to clean up when I add my edits into my computer, which quickly became almost every chapter. 

Wielding the proverbial axe is a necessary evil every writer needs to learn to embrace. Every time I cut out a line, I feel myself cringe as my already not very long word count dips even lower, and cower in the face of the monstrous rewrite that lurks around the corner. Never hesitate to hit delete (except don't really delete bits - cut and paste them into a discard document in case you need to fish out paragraphs later). If you think you can write something better again, chances are you can. 

I'll be back on the day after tomorrow to write day 3 (I need to take an off day so I don't burn out before the end of this revision marathon).

Well, I'm off to watch trashy TV, sleep, and keep my head out of this story for a little while to recharge my batteries.

-Esha