Halfway through the second draft of The Midnight Tide. I tend to be overly lyrical with my description, and run-on sentences are littered throughout my prose. It’s been cathartic to cut them down (though it hurts my soul to do so) because I recognize that it’s easy to get lost among the adverbs and the adjectives and the metaphors. Every once in awhile I get out a whole paragraph (!!!) and I feel the threads of it slip away and the weight of it fall off my shoulders.
I never thought the editing process would be so freeing. But, it’s like cutting away the fat, the chewy bits that don’t improve the flavor of the story, but make it harder to swallow. I can see a final product slowly beginning to emerge and it’s amazing to see it.
Now, if only I can refrain from using so many commas…
Ren Martinez 