While editing a novel I finished back in 2002, I found this humdinger.
I was surprised, though, to see that the door was already cracked open. And through that vertical aperture I heard a voice inside, and my stomach clenched.
Vertical aperture? I want to wring the neck of that 23-year-old English major.
It’s been years since I’ve pulled this novel out. I’ve always had a real soft spot for it and decided it was time to give it a fresh look. What I’ve discovered is that I’ve significantly overwritten the damn thing. Before I started work Friday night, this novel was 104,731 words long. I’m about halfway through my first pass and I’ve already cut 11,000 words. (That’s about 30 pages so far.) I wouldn’t feel so bad if I haven’t edited it so many times before. And every time I passed over vertical aperture? How embarrassing. The 2009 Erik is a follower of Will Strunk’s advice, “Omit needless words,” often to a fault. The 2002 Erik thought, “Omit needless words, unless they happen to be pretty, or you just learned it recently and want to show it off, or otherwise sounds literary and deep and meaningful somehow.” On the positive side, I still do love the story that’s buried beneath all those words.