Comments on: Delete, Delete, Delete

By: Jackie Ashenden

Jackie Ashenden — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 03:38:25 +0000

Maisey – I think rewriting is a good skill to learn. As is realising where you’re going wrong. And look what happened to your rewrites! Don’t know what will happen with this one but it’s coming together MUCH better.

By: Maisey

Maisey — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:28:50 +0000

Argh, Jackie, I feel your pain. I too have done 50K *deletes* and I pretty much always have to chuck my first version or two of the 1st three chapters. I rewrote the beginning of the Russian 3x. I wrote the FULL of the sheikh 3x...gah.

You are not alone. ;)

By: Jackie Ashenden

Jackie Ashenden — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 03:29:02 +0000

Amy – yep, that was pretty much my analysis of it!

By: Amy

Amy — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:32:01 +0000

13K now versus 40K later? I'd say that's a pretty good deal:) Still hurts, though :( Good luck Jackie!!

Amy

By: Jackie Ashenden

Jackie Ashenden — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:43:13 +0000

Caroline – I like the folder named crud!! Lol! No, I never actually delete them, they go into what I call an ‘out takes’ folder and then I reuse bits that I like.

Cat – sometimes my out takes document for an ms is the same word count as the ms itself! Some times it’s more. So really, it’s not a 50k ms, it’s a 100k!

By: Cat Schield

Cat Schield — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:20:30 +0000

13K sounds about right for a complete rewrite. I wonder how many of us realize how many words we delete and rework during revisions. It's probably a lot more than 13k.

Good luck with this version! I can't wait to hear how happy you are with the results!!

By: Caroline

Caroline — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:40:07 +0000

“Ack” to deletions I say! But I did read once that you should never “delete” as such – but put them in a folder marked “crud” – because today’s crud might just be tomorrows “ahha” moment – if you see where I’m going with this rambling of course! Caroline x

By: Jackie Ashenden

Jackie Ashenden — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 04:45:15 +0000

Lacey – well, to be honest, it wasn’t that hard. It’s kind of easy to let go of stuff that isn’t working. Am now 3.5k into the new one and it’s MUCH better so I think it was a good decision.

By: Lacey Devlin

Lacey Devlin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 04:32:50 +0000

Big deletions are always so painful. I cringed just reading about that 13K lol! I’m hoping that after a while I just become desensitized to it and can hit that delete button without blinking 😉

By: Jackie Ashenden

Jackie Ashenden — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:05:28 +0000

Lol! I’m a brave girl and a great writer. 😉 Can I also add: and one day an editor will buy my book.
If my hero ever makes it to the sale stage of course. And if I can make his motivation clear enough! Sigh…