Finally Feedback

A few days ago I heard from a small publishing house who had agreed to take a look at World Of Mirrors, and they turned it down. From our meager email correspondence, I had a feeling they were good folks, so I wrote back and asked for a short answer on why they had decided not to publish. Today I received a courteous answer.

The editors thought the novel needed drastic cuts (about 25%) because there was too much food and too much scenery. Oddly enough, this was a conclusion I had reached on my own, maybe not to the extent of 25%, but I knew it needed a haircut, and I also had decided to take it out of the series and make it a standalone. Ditch the husband, the boss, and some of the other "stuff." The publishers did like the writing, and they even liked the "stuff" too but thought it slowed the pace down. This is the kind of feedback I have been hankering for, let's see, twelve months now.

Come Jan 1, when I have an extra ten hours a day, the World of Mirrors will go on a diet with the rest of us. My thoughts are that this shouldn't take more than a few weeks to do the first chopping, then look at the word count, re-read the manuscript and ask: does it need yet more? There's some fun stuff I will be loathe to cut, not beautiful words, but the character's being a little silly, if you will. So there is plenty of food for thought. Food that won't pack on the pounds.

Now if it would only be that easy drop 25% off the bathroom scale.

Note: no way do food and scenery do not comprise 25% of the book, but it must seem like they do. Obviously slowing down the action. Who knew?

In the meantime, there's Festival Madness to push along. It hasn't had time to bloat yet, but the time at Burning Man had its own silliness. The next scene will be difficult--introducing four new characters at a meeting. Not sure that's the way to do it. We'll see what happens. It's easy if painful to trash a scene. Now a whole manuscript, that's another thing. But we all know writer's must be into pain or they wouldn't be writers, right. Maybe they would be in marketing.

Grapeshot

No longer glowering