I’ve been waiting to give an update on my revision process until I finished Chapter 6. Unfortunately, Chapter 6 took awhile. It needed heavy cuts as well as a complete rewrite of the end of the chapter to make it work.

Now I’ve finally gotten through that pesky chapter and I’ve reached a few milestones in the editing of my first draft. I’ve gotten through the first of four Parts in my novel, I’ve finished the first 20% of my book, and my word count is now under 80,000 words at 79,142.

That means that I’ve cut 9,229 words out of the first 18,289 words, a little more than half. My manuscript as a whole is now 273 pages instead of 295.

If I keep this up this rate of cuts my manuscript will be halved in the end from 88,370 words to 44,185, which would be a little short but okay. I don’t think I will continue to cut as much from each chapter, though. I know that the first few chapters were especially bloated. Plus, when I’m through this first round of revisions I plan on adding one or two scenes to the story, so the word count should end up right where I’d like it to be.

So far, though I’d like to pick up the pace of my editing, I feel like my work is vastly improving from the first draft to the second. I’m very happy with the results.

If I could only pick up the pace to a chapter a day, I’d be done in a little over a month, and then I’d be really, really happy.

Now it’s time for me to start on Chapter 7. I’ll try to blog about the steps in my revision process and my plans for afterwards in a post next week. Maybe I’ll include a picture of my revisions on paper, so you can see just how many changes I’ve been making.