Editing – Round Three

Halle-freakin-lujah, the first round of edits is done. The manuscript is now out of my hands and back to my Sarah, my editor, so that SHE can take another crack at the devil book.

It's been a long and eye-opening month of editing. I learned a lot. A couple of highlights :

1) I tend to describe characters as having "a mop of [insert the adjective here] hair." Really, truly. It was so frequent and obvious that when it was pointed out to me, I was embarrassed. One character had a "mop of shaggy brown hair," another had "a mop of curly red hair," a baby was "cute and chubby, with a shiny little head that would one day sport a mop of wispy toddler hair." Okay, not that last one. The point is, the Mop Top Hair Shop™ should be paying me royalties.

2) I need to chill with the run-on sentences. By nature, I'm an excessive writer. I use a lot of words in places where a few would work just as well. There's no better way to be cured of this than to consciously tackle a manuscript with the intention of cutting words, and realizing in the process how many are worthy of being cut. I'd say that between Sarah and myself, we shortened or cut about 2/3 of the sentences in the book.

The columnist and essayist E.B. White, who is perhaps best known for writing "Charlotte's Web, also wrote and published, along with William Strunk, an English usage style guide. "Elements of Style," often referred to as Strunk and White, contains as straightforward an opinion on this topic as you're likely to find anywhere -

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Words to live, or at least write, by.

Now I have the better part of a month, at least, to forget about the mountain of edits. I can move on to the shiny new idea, which has been rattling furiously in the cage at the back of my brain, trying to get out.

But first – to the disco!

Okay, no disco. I'm too old for excessive fun. I'll probably have a couple of glasses of wine and watch some Netflix. If I'm feeling saucy, I might put on some Earth, Wind and Fire and do the grapevine through the apartment.

Let the music ring boldly, and the liquor flow freely, so as to allow for good and joyous times to roll thunderously through the evening like a gilded chariot carrying Bacchus himself to a feast of good tidings.