I’m going through my book, again, and mercilessly slashing it to bits. I have a bad habit of keeping things in solely because I wrote it. I’m a genius, after all. Only I’m not. I can’t even fool myself into thinking that.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read and reread each single line. Some are great, some need a little bit of polishing, and some are crap. On one particular paragraph I added this little note: Who cares?! Shorten or delete paragraph! There are other lines and paragraphs that I have marked as needing to be cut out. Those parts have bothered me, but I resisted. Enough is enough! I’m taking care of business now.

I’m finding it difficult to delete those words I worked so hard to write. I’m discovering that not everything I wrote is worth saving. I say I’m discovering that fact, but the truth is that I already knew. I guess what I should say is that I’m finally accepting that I need to be a little more discerning as to what makes the final cut of the story.

I’ve read, and I’ve cut, and I’ve rewritten and finagled spelling, grammar, syntax and I’m still not satisfied. As a whole, I’m pleased with the story, but there are those places that cause me distress. I’ve reprinted the whole book, or I’m in the process of doing so, and it comes in at 400 pages, double-spaced. I want to trim that down some.

I’m only on the second chapter, but I’ve managed to cut out maybe a thousand words. I’ve cut out a secondary character’s story arc, one that adds nothing to move the plot forward. There’s another character that needs to be rewritten. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to do that. It’s a puzzle that I need to put together, and I have no idea how the finished picture is supposed to look like. I’m a little stressed.

I’m going to continue reading and making my notes, tweaking it so that I can finally send it to someone to proofread. I’ll correct as many of those as I can find, but I’m sure there has to be several stupid mistakes per page. I can’t wait to be done with this. Why did I think I could do this? I must be mad.

I’m also really tired.