The numbers thus far

[desperance]

Lawks. I've finished editing/redrafting/revising/rewriting (however you like to look at it; I think editing is probably closest) the first three of four parts to "River of the World", and thus far I have cut 27,304 words out of 110,001. Which, your arithmetical minds will tell you, is damn' near a quarter. To be precise, it's 24.8%.

Sheesh. Either it was deeply seriously flabby before, or I have been hacking away good sweet flesh just to get the pagecount down, and the residue will be bone-bare and unlovely. Who can tell?

I still have the longest section to go, another 80,000 words, more or less, and I expect to find fewer to cut. Indeed, so many have gone already, I've almost lost my incisive impetus: as though I've done the tough-love thing, and can give the little darling some leeway now. Tut. Discipline endures. See discipline endure...

Comments

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

Actually, Chaz, something I've never been able to work out - to how many actual published pages (roughly, I know it depends on the font) does your 82697 words actually equate?

I've done my 61000 odd words (including some which may or may not be easily spoken) and that's 192 or 194 pages (depending on which PC I'm using at the time) of double-spaced A4 but I don't know how thick this actually is in terms of shelf space...

And, oh yeah, do hardback and paperback page counts differ?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I just ran the numbers on 'Bridge of Dreams', and they are these:

Text: 170,000 words
MS pages: 488
Published pages: 409

You do the sums. What interests me is that I'm about to produce a sequel significantly shorter than its forebear. I hadn't realised the final version of 'Bridge' was that long. It did get longer during the rewrites, I remember that, but I thought it had come in around 150K. How wrong I was. Dear me.