December 16, 2007

With my rewrites to the earlier portion of the new book, I discovered I had cut nearly two-and-a-half thousand words, bringing the total closer to fifty-seven thousand, down from almost sixty thousand. I still feel this one has a bit farther to go, however, and won't be surprised if it hits seventy or seventy-five thousand words before I'm done the first draft. I spent much of the past two days on two crucial scenes--the wedding on the ship, where a guest falls overboard and is believed to have been murdered, and the aftermath in the days following that incident. Most of the story that comes afterward is triggered by this event.