Adventures in Book Publishing - The Great Purge

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Getting a book published is no mean feat. There's the research, the writing, the re-writing, and more re-writing and maybe some more research. Then a publisher needs to be found and then... then the author has to take their baby and hack it to bits. Seriously.

My manuscript is in the 170,000 word range and needs to be hacked back to the 120,000 word range. All those bios I researched on characters in the Josef saga? Gone... except for the chosen few - like Stephens... and Hinchley-Cooke. I am shaving and condensing and hacking and then sanding over the transitions and rough bits. I know that the manuscript is better after I've done this... but it is still a hard thing to watch so many choice bits end up on the cutting room floor.

I am taking comfort from the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince. "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." I need to keep that in mind.

I also liken this to my flabby, bloated manuscript being put through a serious physical fitness program... I'm hoping that a lean, mean machine is going to come out the other end. It is time-intensive and... the blog suffers a bit as a result.


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