In my blog post a month ago, I mentioned that I have been editing Neyuki, getting it ready to go to my editor in March. My goal was to cut it by 20 percent from 145,000 words. I think I am as close as I will come to that goal at 120,300 words (17 percent cut).
I am both pleased and disturbed by how little of Neyuki’s content I sacrificed in whittling down the word count so significantly. I hope it suggests my wife and I may be imaginative, expressive editors, but it also implies my original writing was wordy and repetitive. I am learning, though, and hope future writing will be both more efficient and more moving.
As with all but the broadest editing of Under Shōko’s Bed, I found it easier to work off of a printed version of the novel. It allows more deliberate, thoughtful changes to the text. One place I departed from that is in using ProWritingAid, a digital editor. Those changes, however, were smaller adjustments in wording. I plan to read through the novel (yet again) to make sure those edits do not affect the flow of the text, since most of the ProWritingAid alterations occurred without an extensive review of the surrounding text.
The edit has been time consuming as both my wife and I worked through the entire text twice (some sections much more) to save 25,000 words. We’ve been bereft of free time for the last two months. With this edit nearing completion, I am considering what comes next. First is another pass through Under Shōko’s Bed, since I am getting feedback from a second editor, Sadie Rittman (the daughter of the editor who worked on it last summer). I also suspect a window of opportunity will close soon for my fourth novel as a subject-matter expert will leave Japan this summer and easy access to his wealth of knowledge will disappear. The more daunting question with that novel is what bigger, deeper meaning I will offer to readers than the arcs of the various relationships, both loving and unfaithful.
It will be a momentous winter and spring! I hope I will be efficient too, since I have my third and fifth novels to whip into shape, and I still hope to create new content at the same time I am editing the old.