I've recently been asked to contribute to an anthology of work by local writers in the Lothian area of Scotland.
Great, I thought, I've got a piece that will fit right in. I pulled up the said piece, re-read it and thought, yeah, that's pretty good.
Then came the crunch: Max word count of 2000 words. My story? 2987.
This was after the story had been through the revision process once, losing around 300 words that time.
So, I printed it out, and over a weekend, I re-read it and made notes, marked great chunks for deletion and re-worded passages, all on paper. Only then (about 3pm on the Sunday afternoon) did I start to rewrite it in Word.
My normal editing process involves a read-through with some overview notes on paper, followed by a more extensive edit on the computer. I use Word's Track Changes and Comments functionality for this and it works well for me. This time, I carried out the full process on paper. There was something very satisfying about the connection made by feeling the pen move on the paper and seeing the ink laid down that really sparked the creative juices. The typing up was pretty much just that: typing up the hand-amended manuscript.
The resultant story came in at 2100 words (and a quick query to the editor allowed that this was fine) and was much better than before; it was tighter, more focussed and a lot more punchy.
I've had a few short stories published before, but this hammered home the point that every single word counts. Before I started, I would have said it was impossible to cut nearly a third from the manuscript and still have a coherent story, but I was wrong - it was possible and the resulting piece of work was light years ahead of the original version in terms of both style and narrative arc.
So if you write a lot of short stories (and I do - at least two a month; it's kind of like an exercise routine I have) then give it a whirl and turn your normal rewriting style on it's head. You might be surprised with the results.
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