Word Count Blues

What the heck?

I’ve been editing my ms, trying to pare down the word count. Cut out the repetition, the frivolous scenes, all that stuff. And through hard work and determination, I have been whittling away at the word count. From 110,000 words, I got down to 109k, then towards 108k. Then the thing started retaining water or something. I noticed, halfway through this edit that gee, the number of pages in this document has swelled. So, out of curiosity’s sake, I checked the word count. Ack! 120k!!!! (Eeeep!)

What the hell has my ms been eating? Whipped cream and chocolate bars? Oh no, wait. That’s me. I’ve been whittling away at the Mother’s Day Feast leftovers. I’d hate for anything to go bad. Now, where was I? Ah yes. The five pounds that my ms, okay ten pounds, that my ms put on while I wasn’t looking. I had that thing working out every day, eating right and everything and then bam, there it is; ten pounds.

It’s like this thing is trying out for the cheerleading team and has to weigh 100lbs so the ground team can toss it in the air without anybody breaking anything and there it goes and gains weight. What is it doing? Sneaking behind the bleachers to eat deep fried Twinkies (which are actually not half bad) when it’s on break? How the hell is this thing ever going to make the squad?

I’d better do some research on word count and genres before I poke myself repeatedly in the eye.

My Devious Plan

My devious plan is working.

With airfares on the rise it is becoming a bit out our reach to fly out to my grandma’s cottage this summer. Thus my devious plan: drive.

See, I started small a few months ago. I suggested we fly to Ontario (4 hour flight) and then borrow Dad’s Ontario van and drive from there to Nova Scotia (30 or so hours) where we could hang out and explore for a few weeks and then drive back to Ontario, bum around for a bit longer and then fly back. Ta-da summer over and lots of adventures under our belts. A little balking at that plan because Ontario to Nova Scotia is quite a long drive.

Then I moved to a slightly bigger plan (and more unrealistic plan) around Christmas time. How about fly to Ontario, then drive to FRANCE! (There is a little island still belonging to France off the coast of Newfoundland.) Come on, there is even a ferry (about a 40 hour drive, plus ferry time) so you don’t have to drive the WHOLE way. No problem. Buckle up, let’s go. (No takers on that one even though I pulled out the globe and showed them how short a distance it really was and waxed on about how cool it would be to go to France for the summer.)

Now the idea of driving to Ontario (35 hours or so) doesn’t seem so bad. It is, in fact, quite reasonable.

To make it even cheaper we could tent! Fun adventure! Well, actually I had to work on that one a bit. I promised my hubby a Thule so we’d have lots of room in the economy-mobile. Plus, I promised to bring an air mattress to sleep on. And that I would set up the tent. And blow up the mattress. And find the campgrounds. And plan the food. And maintain the car (actually that one is still up my sleeve). And  promised we could stay in a hotel every other night. It would be so much fun!

Now, I’m trying to convince my mom to come too. Come on mom. Lots of coffee! And fun. And tacky monuments. You know you wanna…

(We’ll just sort of gloss over the fact that my five-year-old has a meltdown if we have to drive farther than 20 minutes in one day.)

If I Were American…

If I were American, I would so totally vote for Obama. And not just because he is smokin’ hot.

You see, I was reading Maclean’s (March 17, 2008) the other day (a little behind on my reading evidently) and came across an article on him and how he would govern. After gawking at all the photos, I mean after skimming the article for interesting bits, I came across a column of text that won me over. Allow me to share.

First of all, he is a supporter of teachers. He is against teaching to the test, which inadvertently happens all over North America. He proposes that tests be given at the beginning of the school year so they may be used as a diagnostic aid. Therefore, find out what the kids know and specifically, what they don’t, and then go teach the stuff that will fill the holes in their knowledge. Brilliant! Yet, it doesn’t seem to out there of an idea if you stop to think about it. Hmmm…are we talking common sense solutions to be used by the government?

Second, he’s hot. Oops, I mean he has some great thoughts on parenting. Here’s a quote: “It doesn’t matter how much money we put in if parents don’t parent. It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, do good in school, but when they get home you have the TV on, the radio on, there’s not a book in the house and you’ve got the video game playing.” He also tells parents to give their kids a good breakfast. I know it is basic, but it is SO right. Those small things can really add up to big differences.

So when it comes to problem solving, Obama seems to be the president of common sense solutions. Now his only job is to get parents and teachers to turn their thinking around and follow his gospel.

When I’m Famous

When I’m famous and an interviewer asks me how many edits it took to get my book ‘ready’, I think I will have to lie. I have seriously lost count of how many times I have edited this one piece that I am working on right now. It was a panster plot which means that I have had to go back and do a lot tweaking bits here and there, adding things in, making sure my themes are carried all the way through; all that sort of stuff.

So, here I am in what is likely to be an edit in the 40s. Then again, how do you even count what is an ‘edit’? Is it when you go in and change one sentence or each time you go through the whole manuscript from top to bottom? Either way, I’ve lost track. If you look in my documents folder on my computer you will see the names of the different versions of this piece evolve from the original working title and its version numbers on to the next working title and its version numbers on to the system I currently have. And let me tell you, this system is not without its flaws! I have about ten or more versions of ‘final’, ‘final with italics’, ‘final American spelling’, ‘really final’, ‘completed’, ‘tweaking’, ’almost done’, ‘edits’, finalbackup’… Seriously, I could go on. It has simply gotten out of control. I have finally dumped all the old versions into their own folder so I won’t get confused and start working on the wrong version. Could imagine what a mess that would create? My head hurts just thinking about it (not including my eye–which already hurts due to a hairspray incident which I will not get into).

Secondary Characters

A few weeks ago I took out a scene that I felt wasn’t sitting right in my story. It felt purposeless and that it wasn’t progressing the story and was rather catty–basically not being true to the story nor the characters.

Then I sent the chapters surrounding the missing scene to my critique partners and they were all up in arms with comments that were along the lines of what the heck happened? Why did you lead up to this scene, skip over it all together and then sum in up in a sentence later on? How did this rift happen between these two characters? What? What? What?

Ah crap. It wasan important scene! So, I dig through old versions and pulled the scene back out and plunked it back in, adding another three pages to my already big manuscript. And reading it afresh, I realised that it was important to the story and it was true to it–whether I liked it or not. The scene showed the rift begin between the heroine and her boyfriend as well as the beginning of the heroine identifying her inner strength and pulling on it in a time of need.

So, the scene is back and everything makes more sense again. Strangely enough, I learned something about myself as a writer with this scene. I think the real reason I originally took this scene out is that it has a secondary character being mean to my heroine–who I loved dearly. I came to this conclusion when I did an edit when I was plunking the hated scene back in, because when I was done, I was a little pissed. I was grumpy! So I sat back and thought, why is this? It can’t be the peanut butter cookies I just ate. Well, it is because I HATE the secondary character that I created. Seriously. She is a mean, conniving bitch that ensures that she illustrates how my heroine doesn’t fit in at a party. I disliked her somuch and the way that she made my heroine feel, that I eliminated her without realising what I was doing to the story. So now, The Bitch is back and is as mean as ever. Well, for her one scene…then I give her the awful boyfriend back. Ma-ha-ha. The rest, as they say, is history.