Oh editing. I love you and I hate you. It feels like I’ve been doing nothing but editing since April (ETA – that’s pretty much the truth, actually). I had a few lingering scenes that were breaking my head on VANISHING ACT, so I logged off the internet and went and worked in the other room. No distractions, just me and my characters as I tried to force them to do things that did not feel natural (since I’d already written the climax of the story once, rewriting it in a different direction – no matter how good the direction is – still feels unnatural).

But I wrote a huge chunk and I’m happy to say that I’m done, more or less, with the edits. Except I’ve got to go back through and re-read one more time to make sure there’s no bizarre jumps in logic. At one point I ripped out almost 40k from this book and rewrote back in about 25k (some of it coming from very early drafts).

For those of you that are word count junkies like myself? Starting tally of this book – 92k.

Tally after completing the last draft? 74.5k – my goal. I’m really happy with that number. The 92k felt bloated, but I wasn’t sure where to cut. The 75k feels much more streamlined for a YA.

I expect the wordcount to bounce up a little as I go through a paper copy of the novel and re-read one last time. There’s always tweaks here and there. But I can’t imagine it getting much higher than the 75k it stands at now.

And maybe now I will go back to my crackhead project. Or work on some short stories. Have not decided, but the world is my oyster. For a few weeks, anyhow.