Tough slog...

...but hopefully a rewarding one. I am about three-quarters through my final edit of Ghost Kiss and I am both shocked and delighted at how much I've been able to cut from something already revised three times. Editing with the 10% rule in mind and working around Chipewa's distaste for the word 'was' has taught me some major lessons in economy of language – an economy I'll strive to apply in first drafts from now on. It feels like a major step in maturity as a writer – recognising that proper, brain-pain editing is just as or more important than the euphoria of composition.

At a rough estimate, I expect to cut Ghost Kiss down from 92,000 words to 87,000 words – nearly 8 Word pages of superfluous description and clumsy sentences. When it gets in the Chipewa ring, Ghost Kiss will be lean and hard and ready to fight. Ding-ding!