I haven’t talked about what I’m doing in the writing department for a while, though I’ve been sharing my journey into the Upper Reaches of Diamond Peak with my Facebook fans. If you’re not getting those scintillating updates (including photos to stimulate your–and my–imagination) then go to the page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tahlia-Newland-author/188047104605893?ref=hl, like it, then hang your curser over the like button and click on ‘Show in News feed’, even better, click ‘Get notifications’.
But to fill you in, Demon’s Grip, book three in the Diamond Peak Series is in the hand of my trusty beta readers, and hopefully I’ll get it back inn a couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, I’m revising book four, Eternal Destiny, which I haven’t looked at for three years. I have to cut 30,000 words from it and I’m having no problem. My writing had improved enormously since I wrote this second draft, and there are many necessary scenes , extraneous paragraphs and passages that can simply be worded more succinctly and therefore more elegantly and simply better.
I love this quote from Dr Seuss
The writer who breeds more words than he needs, makes reading a chore for the reader who reads.
When you have to cut so many words, you get brutal, and that’s really good for the way I wrote three years ago. My first drafts are much more sparse these days.
Anyway, I’m enjoying climbing the upper reaches of Diamond Peak with Ariel (my heroine), Nick (sexy hunk), Walnut (wise guide) Kestril (an illusionist) and Twitchet (a talking cat) – Layla (green spiky hair and can fly) is providing aerial surveillance. It’s great to be getting so close to the goal; mind you, the stakes are much higher and the demons more powerful. However, Ariel’s training is progressing nicely.
It is, however, an enormous amount of work to get it ship shape and ready to roll out to you guys. I’m just glad that I wrote it when the inspiration was hot, because now all I have to do is revise and edit, not start the story from scratch.
The ending is truly awesome. I can’t wait to get to it, so much so that I happily chop out anything that is simply too dull to bother editing. Yep, that’s the way to get an action packed book.
As for book two, Stalking Shadows, Facebook fans only know where that’s up to. The rest of you will find out tomorrow.
Sounds great Tahlia. Those final story edits are sometimes the most difficult and writers never feel totally comfortable when they have to consign some of their precious words to the bin! Still, all in a good cause, as you like you say you don’t want unnecessary material interrupting the flow… Good luck with your books…
Thanks Tim. I’ve learnt not to be precious with words because my books are much better with less of them.