Ouch. That hurts.

So today's task has been to cut cut cut. Perhaps the image on the left might be taking things a tad too far (I always did have a tendency towards the dramatic)... BUT oh my goodness this is hard.

You see, The First Novel has rather a lot of words in it. That is a good thing. It makes it a novel, rather than a pamphlet. So, yay for words. But you can have too many. Words that don't serve a purpose. Words that slow things down so the reader gets bored and frustrated. These words are BAD words (like @#*$).

I've taken to the manuscript with a chainsaw (or rather, a tiny pair of nail scissors) and tried to get rid of some of those naughty words. After briefly considering just losing every seventh or eighth word or so just to make things easy, I decided to follow my agent's advice and try to cut the boring bits.

Thus far, 2500 words have been obliterated. Gone, just like that.

Farewell, dear words. I'll miss you. Even though you were a bit rubbish and boring and just... self-indulgent. Actually... GOOD RIDDANCE!