The Nessecary Evil of Writing: Cutting

"Just get your first draft out there"

"You can't edit a blank page"

"The first draft is inherently word vomit, just get it on the page"

    We've all heard these before. These phrases commonly circulate writing communities and for good reason! This is one of the best peices of advice you can give to a new reader, but once you complete that first draft, new readers are left staring at their creation wondering "What now?" 

    Now, my dear travellers, welcome to the Homestead. Grab a seat by the warm hearth and get cozy while I explain the cruelest neccesary evil of Writing; Cutting.

    No matter what length your book is, 20k, 80k, 120k, it's always hard to cut things. Authors who are disassisfied with their book length especially have a hard time cutting. I recently finished the first draft of JUNE 9TH and it's come to a grand total of 43k. Yaaaaay... For comparison, my first book was about 200,000 words. I tend to overwrite and ramble on, which is great for when you get to the second stage, editing, however when you have a short book, it becomes harder to axe peices that you are deeply attached to. 

That's my advice to you:

DON'T GET ATTACHED

    When you finish your first draft, especially if it's your first book, there's a sense of excasty, I mean you just finished a book! That's a major accomplisment and you should be super proud of yourself. However the worst thing you can do is look at your first draft and say "Wow, this is the best thing I ever could have created" There's always room for improvement and months or years down the road you may look back on those "genius ideas" and have a better one, and that's okay! Cutting, reworking, and rewriting is, in my opinion, the most fun part of writing. Some characters will clutter the plot, some arcs will seem out of place, some descriptions just won't make sense. It's important to look at your work with a mindset of "How can I make this better?" instead of peaking in your first draft. Pssst, this also helps when you have Beta readers. If you're mind is more angled towards constructive critisism, their comments will feel less like a direct attack 

    All in all, cutting can be hard and emotionally wretching. Recently I had to cut a major character, Eric from The King's Actors, because he wasn't big enough to effect the plot in an important way and adding more scenes to fill out his arc would clutter the plot. In the beginning it was a small thought that destroyed me. I couldn't imagine the book without him, but as I was editing, I realized just how neccesary it was to cut him. After days of crying and debating, I took to my manuscript, enterred "Eric" into the find and replace bar and removed every mention of him....the hardest thing for me to accept was just how easily it was to cut him. The more you get attached to your characters, the best descisions become the hardest. 

Thanks for reading and stopping by, as always keep writing and stay tuned!