Weeding

I just went through the woods with a can of orange spray paint, marking all the dead wood that needed to go and the thickets that needed to be thinned.

I'd call it the most productive couple of hours I've had in the whole writing process.

Did I mention I finished the first draft? Finished early Sunday Eve and I was completely wrung out physically and emotionally.

The books say to put your story aside for as long as you can and come back with fresh eyes. I should do that at some point, but right now -- now that I've just written the chapters in which I had to take up all the dangling plot threads and knot them off -- I have the best understanding of the architecture of this story I ever will have. This is absolutely the best time to go back and see when I introduced ideas and if I repeated myself or said too little...

...Or more often, said too much.

The worst repetition I see right now is that there are too many diary entries that tackle what living underground was like. There may be a way to collapse or trim these but that will take a separate work session. There's no overlap...so this will be a matter of losing what right now feels like important world-building details.

There's also two pub conversations which are basically mid-career management for the CRM archaeologist. There's overlap there.

Otherwise...not too bad. And the best part? I was able to take a whole bunch of things I'd brought in either because I thought I might need them or because the research was at the tip of my tongue, and mark them to be trimmed or removed. 

 

I mean, I don't want to lose James Henry Greathead, but if it helps the story...

I'm feeling good about the editing process. I think I can tighten this one quite nicely, and it won't take but a week or two (work and health permitting).

***

And I was reviewing comments I've gotten and I realized something else. In this book, I can explicitly flag some of the things for the reader as "you aren't expected to get this reference."

The Athens book was about trying to fit in around people who knew and appreciated the Classics, and there was a lot of "But everyone know about..." in the dialog. In the London book, I've underlined many times that the Brits are competitive. Hey, there's a scene in which Penny says, "can you please explain to the poor American" and they say, "nope, no can do."

The Japan book will offer an option to go this one better. They don't expect the foreigner to know or understand anything. She's not Japanese, after all! So anything Penny actually gets, there will be a big reaction. 

But the important thing is that I can flag for the reader, basically telling them, "No, you aren't stupid, nobody is expected to know this."

Still better to take out stuff if I can. It doesn't take much to leave a flavor of there being a whole world out there.

Speaking of. The Panto scene is up on the block for major re-write. That's going to end up longer, I'm afraid. It went far too much tell and not nearly enough show to justify it being in the book in the first place. I'm at 79.5K total, with a good 500 words already marked for deletion so...not bad.