I had high aspirations of blogging daily, but I’m going back to a weekly promise, because, well, I am working on a book, and that sucks every living word out of me, and by the end of the day, there just aren’t any left.

I’ve spent the last 8 days editing The Forgotten Road.  So far, I’ve completed work on 13 of 34 original chapters.  There’s one new one in there, written from scratch.  I’ve trimmed about 4500 words out of the existing manuscript.  I split one very long chapter into two.  I’ve completed fixing the POV issues in my flashbacks (that was a killer), and have been rewriting anything that seems even remotely passive.

I’m currently working on a new chapter for one of my characters.  It’s a bridge chapter, all emotion and fear, and it’s hard to write because the next chapter for them already exists with some of this emotion and fear, and my additions here are going to require some changes there, but so be it.

The editing is going really well.  The completed chapters of the manuscript feel much more ‘DONE DONE’ than they ever have before, and I can’t wait to put it back in front of readers and agents.  I think I’m still on track for the end of September for completion.  Maybe even a little bit earlier.  A lot depends on this new chapter I am writing, and one more new one that has to come a few chapters from now.  Stripping words out is actually the easy part of this edit, and I am being brutal.

I want to do a really good job on this revision because I know this one is make it or break it.  But I also want to get this out there and get the feedback from agents.  There are some major decisions pending in my life, and everything is on hold until I really feel that my writing has a commercial future.