WHY WON'T THE WORDS STOP TAUNTING ME?

Christmas 2010 is now in the past and I am becoming restless once more. Why? Well as you know I have taken on the mighty task of de-bulking my manuscript. I had told myself that I wish to complete all editing of my first novel before 2011 but I fear I will not be making that a reality.

I need to get rid of 40 000 words to make it a reasonable 100 000 words. I was told this is the maximum word count for first time authors. Anything more and agents don't want to touch it, out of fear that it is over written and too much editing needs to be done.

I finished editing my printed out pages and of course I wouldn't know the final word count until I made the actual changes in my Microsoft word program. I am more than halfway on the Microsoft word program and I have only reduced the mighty 144 224 word count by 4773 words. Bringing me to 139 451.

I still have half a manuscript to go but I doubt I have eliminated enough scenes and chapters.

What was my approach? Well I printed out the actual manuscript. Read through it with my red pen and orange highlighter in hand and started crossing out scenes, words and even chapters I felt could be parted with. I thought I got rid of quite a lot of things but now I fear it was still not enough.

Will I make my personal deadline of finishing my editing before 1 January 2011? I doubt it but maybe I will pull an all nighter and surprise myself.