I’ve been going through this novel like a reaper, cutting and slashing, removing viscera, changing things around. It’s fun so far. The request was to knock between 50 and 100 pages out of the manuscript, which roughly equates to between twelve and twenty thousand words. So far I have flensed the text of seven thousand. This may sound like a lot, but the book was nearly 140,000 to start with, so it can lose a little weight and probably be much better for it.
The weather has been beautiful and since I am working in my front room, by the big picture window, it’s been pleasant. At the rate I’m going I ought to have a new draft of the book in a few more weeks. At which point I have a half dozen other things in need of tending.
Meantime, as well, I’m slogging through Paul Johnson’s Birth of the Modern: 1815 – 1830. It is the estimable Mr. Johnson’s contention that these were the years which gave birth to our modern world, the period during which everything changed from the old system to the new, and, 400 pages in, he’s making a good case for it. Of course, any historical period like this is going to have some sprawl. He’s had to go back to just prior to the American Revolution and look forward to the Civil War (using a purely American point of reference, even though the book is attempting to be global). I can think of worse markers than the end of the Napoleonic Era for an argument like this and he is certainly one of the more readable historians. Occasionally his observations are a bit surprising, but in the main this is a credible piece of work.
I read his Modern Times a few years ago and found it very useful, even though some of his interpretations of major 20th Century events I found surprising. As always, it is necessary to have more than one source when studying history. Interpretation is a bay with hidden shoals and can be perilous. But this one is a good one.
Just updating. Go back to what you were doing.
