I. Hate. Editing.
So I started editing The Awakening because it got to 120K and wasn’t really going anywhere. I stopped writing and backed up to go through and remove/trim several tangents. Which I did.
So why the heckaroni did the novel GROW, rather than SHRINK?
And now I am going through it AGAIN to trim yet another tangent. I like what this one adds to the plot but I agree I do too much dialogue within it. As I go along, I am trying to also narrow down the purpose of the book.
In To Sleep, the reader discovers several things. It ends with the MC and her friends going somewhere to recover and decide what to do next. In The Awakening, they are starting the task of “awakening” others like them. I need to decide if awakening them is the single purpose (besides growth of the characters). If so, then do I need to include the details of that or just the growth of that. And how much does the reader really want to know? Does the reader want to know every single meeting or just the results of the meetings? At the same time, I need to keep the MC grounded. She cannot go from a simple Human to being what amounts to the head of the new nation unless she is strong enough. The reader needs to find this believable. And they can’t find it believable unless I show her growth. And I can’t show her growth without displaying the details.
‘Round and ’round I go until I, like, barf.
And meanwhile, the wee little novel fairies sneak into my computer in the morning (between 8 and 10, to be specific) and add random words so that the word count rises instead of falls. Either that or I’ve been drinkin’ a wee bit too much Buffalo Trace and/or Knob Creek.