My writing is back on track

It has been quite a few days since my last post here. Sorry – I’ve been distracted by working on my novel for children.

A few minutes ago I finished the 8th draft of the book that has dominated my thinking and writing over the last 18 months. This latest draft is a total rewrite, changing it from the third person to the first person. I think it works, but the real test will come when I read it again – this time I think I’ll read it aloud. This is always a good strategy to find any awkward passages, phrases or sentences that still need a little work and any other glaring errors.

One of the interesting outcomes of this particular rewrite was that my overall word count has risen nearly 500 words and it is now just a few short of 40,000. This is the recommended length for my Masters degree, so I’m right on the money. This increase in words is notable in that I’ve also cut out many hundreds of words, some of them redundant words or phrases. I couldn’t believe how many of these redundancies I had included in earlier drafts. One example: “He felt tears welling in his eyes.” Where else would tears be – dripping from his ears? Or toes? Cut out “in his eyes”.

As I finish off my Masters Degree novel and accompanying exegesis essay in coming weeks and then submit it for assessment, I will be able to get back to more regular postings here.

In the meantime: good writing.