I never thought I would be so focused on counting words. It’s like an obsession with me now.  I even struggle with Twitter.  I’m usually right at the 140 limit there.  Do I really have such a hard time limiting what I’m saying?  Do I talk too much?  Maybe just write too much?  After the past few days of editing what I had already edited and trying to sort out all of the confusion, I think I’m even dreaming in word count.  My conversations are going to start being limited to noun-verb interactions only.  Nothing superfluous.

Some of the changes I’ve made have impressed me, however, so at least I’m headed in the right direction.  The first draft of Part One was somewhere around 45,000 words, and I’m down to 35,000.  And reading through it, I didn’t even miss all the stuff that I had taken out.  That’s definitely in the right direction.  Kill your babies.  One of those sayings like “Show, don’t tell” and “Write what you know.”  Hm.  “Kill your babies” sounds so hostile though.  I suppose it has to be hostile because it’s really hard to do.  It has to make an impact.  Surprisingly enough, it’s getting easier as I’ve practiced at it.  I’ve kept entire sections–pages and pages–simply because there’s ONE funny joke that I managed to work in, or a really good line or two of dialogue that I don’t want to get rid of.  But I’ve discovered that if I really want to work that joke or dialogue in, I usually can somewhere else, and it might even work better.  I just need to remember that.

One of my favorite sites to follow on Twitter is Fuel Your Writing.

http://twitter.com/fuelyourwriting

Today it had an article about 10 Tips for Improving Your Writing Website:

http://www.fuelyourwriting.com/10-tips-for-improving-your-web-writing/

I’m not following any of them.  Well.  That’s not true.  I am sharing information (like the website info) and I’m making this blog definitely all about the writing process.  I try to be unique, slightly informal, engage, interact…  All of that.  I am NOT, however, very clear in my subject lines.  Need to work on that.  That does seem to be a fairly important point.  Sometimes I can’t even remember what the post was about.  And what?  I’m up to all of 8 posts now?

Then again, sometimes it’s all about the process.  I don’t really plan my posts out very well.  (I know…  Really?  Does it show?  Ha.)  Usually, when I sit down to write a post, I only have a very general idea and that’s only the start of it.  Once I edit a bit, only about a third of what I originally wrote shows up on the site.  And with the initial posts, I didn’t edit at all.  I thought the more raw, the better.  But now, after reading that article, I’m thinking a bit more editing couldn’t hurt.

Promised myself I wouldn’t swear on my blog.  I swear enough as it is.  Trying to keep it classy.  But now I wish I hadn’t made that promise.

And the reason?  After all that work I did last week, I sat down in front of my computer and realized that I had DONE IT ALL ON THE WRONG COPY!  That’s right.  I saved one copy of the first part of the book as an original draft, and the other as a working draft.  Only smart, right?  That way I can go back and see what I’ve taken out, what I’ve changed, if I really like it or not…  Only the previous week I edited the proper working draft, and then last week I edited the original draft.  Brilliant!  Sheesh.  That’s like Writer’s Boo-boos 101.  Right up there with not backing up my work and losing the entirety of Chapter 6 and using “your” for “you’re”.  Which I’ve also done.  But only once.  So I suppose it’s good that I learn from my mistakes.

Crappy Monday (that doesn’t count as swearing…).  I was all ready to sit down and get things accomplished and now I get to go through both copies, line by line, and compare and make sure it’s all the way I want it.  And do I bother changing the original draft back?  I feel like I have to–that was the whole point of having the original draft in the first place.  Hmm…  But wait!  Having learned that oh-so-important lesson about backing up my work, I bet I have a copy of the original already saved.  Ha!  See?  Still work, just not as much.