Killing the Baby

Today I 'kill the baby'. It's a harsh visual for a harsh tactic in writing. And it needs to be done. Yesterday I stopped for a second to check how many pages I had cut from Lifebringer. I had felt happy before as I estimated the number of pages of the first draft at 660 and the second draft at 480. And I was already 50 pages under par. Good weeding, I thought. But something bugged me yesterday. How did I get that number (660)? Because all my notes kept saying 445. Then I recalled a conversation with my dad, who told me that Harry Potter clocked in at 320 words a page. After having read this I had recalculated my first draft in the wee hours of night and came out to 660 instead of 445. And this number stuck.

Shock number 1: My draft 2 page estimates suddenly didn't look so rozy anymore.

 So I went back and checked the number of words. Screw page count. Everyone counts by words anyway. 205.000! Crap. Not wanting to be influenced too much by 'standards' and 'publishable amounts for young adult books' I had only glanced briefly at insider's advice while writing the first draft. But now, a feeling of dread crept over me. I only had to click one right link on Google and there it was: thread after thread in a message board about how you simply can't get published if your book is over 100K in words (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102280) . Auto-rejections, panicked writers trying to cut down to 70K or chopping their work up in several books. I had enough for a trilogy and this was meant to be the first in a series of five! Aaaaaaaahhh.

Shock number 2: Publishers will not even look at a work that is a ridiculous 200K.

Because very late in the game (after a full year of writing) I agreed with my co-writer Nancy that I would have to switch perspectives in the book to keep the excitement going (which is a standard method used nowadays) I've had to add 3-4 pagers of story told from a different character's point of view. So even though I've been cutting events, characters and information left and right still words kept pouring in. I spent three years plotting a story stuffed with so many goodies involving personal development of the main character Simon, the 'truth' about fairy tales, the horrors of deforestation, the evils of greed and a journey that embraces four different countries. Another year writing it and another half year redrafting it.

Shock number 3: I wasted 5 years focusing on 'the greatest young adult mythological eco-adventure ever told' and it will likely never even get touched because it's the volume of Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire.

So now I have to kill the baby. As one writer kept saying: Kill. The. Baby. Pure and simple. No regrets. Start hacking away. Kill off characters. Napalm locations. Watergate events. Whatever it takes to tell the bare bone story of a boy who sets out to rescue his sister and is sucked into a battle between good versus evil. Do it. Now. Today is the day words will die.