Well, we all have to find joy somewhere, correct? Recently, with everything being terribly annoying, dull, and boring, and with me wishing with all my poor little heart that I was home, I’ve been finding a lot of joy in working on my writing. From time to time it’s frustrating, but I’m actually really excited.
I’ve been doing an absolute hatchet job to Britannia, something that I thought I would never do. I’ve already cut 10,000 words and five chapters. I’m only on what is now chapter 16! So I’ve done a lot of slicing and dicing. But frankly, I think it needed it. It was always a kind of bloated. I just needed a bit of prodding to get me to work on it. The prod was an off-handed comment someone made that it would be nearly impossible to sell a 130,000 word book, which is how long Britannia was. So that got me to thinking it was time to take a critical look at Britannia.
So what have I done? I totally rewrote the beginning, combining two chapters into one and making it so the king dies basically without regaining consciousness. I also moved around chapters so that I introduce the twins and Monat in the first chapter, then Calfyn in the next, and Benitus in the last. That way I introduce them all as quickly as it’s possible to do so. I also eliminated the backstory of Prasutagus which was great but un-needed. I snipped away at a great deal of wonderful character stuff that really doesn’t do much to advance the plot. And . . .voila! Ten thousand fewer words and what I hope is a much smoother read.
I did a lot of the rearranging today. I have two beta readers on the beat (they read my work and give feedback), one of them slightly more useful than the other. The more useful one loved the second file I sent her becuase they really started the story. So I took those chapters and moved them up!
Despite how much I’ve changed, I don’t really feel the pain. I feel really excited. I think all the changes are definitely for the better and will get this book sold at last. My god! It’s actually been two years now since I finished it. But let’s not talk about that. In any case, I have the old version all safe and sound and someday when I’m rich and famous I’ll offer the “deleted scenes” version. Haha, yes, when I am rich and famous!
By the way, the title of this post is a chapter title from Britannia. It’s one of my more
