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Raine posted an update in the group
December SloMo 7 years, 4 months ago Goal of 1k words today have mutated into a goal of just getting through the day in one piece. And possibly printing out an MS. I’ve been told I need to trim it back by 10-15k. Which is a little daunting, and like @philippaeast with her more esoteric edits, I need to make sure I am doing this in short enough bursts that I am genuinely paying attention. So I’m going to print out the whole thing and then hide most of it from view so it doesn’t look too intimidating!
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I have had to do major trimming in the past, Raine, and actually found it quite liberating once I had got into the right frame of mind.
Hi @raine. I feel your pain! Is that comment about trimming one that you have only just received? If so, then it might need a little time to digest. Is it a change that you are, in principle, in accord with? Do you think it’s a case of losing some scenes / a subplot line, or more a case of just tightening everything and trimming words throughout?
I think getting a print out is a great start. I have just done that as well.
This may be helpful to you, or not, but one way I’ve found really useful with cutting is listening to a read-out of the MS (I get the “accessibility” function on my iPad to do this for me). I find that, when reading, all the words on the page look equally important to me. But when I have to sit and listen, it quickly becomes evident to me where bits are dragging / unnecessary.