0 me, a macchiato and old red

This was the scene in my local café this morning.  Strong coffee, fingers stained with red ink.  Pondering, prepping my novel for more surgery.

Major changes in the last few days.  Word count literally cut in half (not a permanent change, I will be working some of the cuts back in).  After a long talk with a dear friend who gets all this stuff, a few blasts went off in my little mine.  Change the beginning. Change where it starts.

It was hard for me to make that change, largely because I was so invested in the first part of the story.  But it had to be done.  I had to take my ego out of it.  And having re-read that section, all 80,000 words of it (!), I think the feedback the agent gave me about my synopsis applies.  Well written, but unappealing.  I had always found this part of the book very interesting to read but of course I would, because it's so self indulgent!  It needed to be written but I know a lot of it doesn't need to be published. I just relished the chance to finally have my say.  And there was a lot to say.

Now, the story begins with what was the first chapter of Part 2.  The energy is completely different.  This is where the action really starts. And it makes sense for the novel to start there, when there has already been a huge bomb blast and the reader can glean the back story as my character picks up the pieces.

I marvel at the evolution of this piece of work.  It started so differently.  I began it for completely different reasons than the reasons I'm still going now, peeling away the layers, cutting and pasting, slashing and burning, hoping at the end of it all there will be something I'll be proud to look at and say  I wrote that.