A Secret Post

I hope the readers who love Witch Hollow won't see this post. I am writing this for the aspiring authors, who are still learning to write in English. Remember I said that after I finished the last book of the series, I'd edit the first 4 and move on? Well, I began editing the first book and... cut out 19.000 words!!!

How did it happen? Here's how:

I never liked how the first book had turned out. It was slow, stilted, riddled with awkward phrasing. I had edited it a few times before, cutting out 5000 words, and thought I couldn't make it any better, and that I better moved on to other books. But now, almost 3 years later, when I began reading WHWS, I didn't know if I had to laugh or to cry. My goodness, it was bad! So bad I was red with shame. I knew I couldn't leave it like that, and I began rewriting the whole book.

3 days ago WHWS was 72.000 words. Today it's 53.000. But guess what, the story is the same, all the characters are there, and all the events. Well, almost. I cut out a few scenes, but overall, not much has changed.

So what does this mean?

It means that if you can chop out 19.000 words and still have the same story, then those 19.000 words had nothing to do there in the first place. A lot of them were adjectives and adverbs. And other unnecessary garbage.

Photo from http://laughsandlove.com.

At last I'm not ashamed to mention WHWS when I talk about my books :)) OK, it's 50 pages shorter, but it's 50 times better.

And the book is still free (and always will be), so if you're interested to compare the old and new versions, you can delete the old one from your Amazon account and download the new version.

What am I doing now? That's right, I am editing WHFR. It's 83.000 words at the moment. I wonder how much weight it's going to lose :)) Ha-ha!!!

What was Stephen King saying? Kill your darlings? I don't think he meant only the characters. Kill the words, fellow authors. Less is more.