Editing can become a never-ending process. It certainly takes a lot more time to rewrite than it does to assemble the initial story into a cohesive narrative whole with plot, pacing, tension, conflicts, climax, resolution and some healthy doses of imagery, alliteration, verisimilitude, foreshadowing, etcetera, all to produce entertainment and with any luck and skill, some effect upon the reader.
So what editing does is clean away everything that gets in the way of the elements so that they can be recognized for whatever brilliance they have achieved. In A Bottle of Beer, I’ve taken out over 20% of the weight of the story in excess verbiage. I’ve also made a couple of adjustments for clarity and reread several times to catch whatever else has been missed. I’ve been able to lift some correctly accented Spanish, and decided to change Yolanda’s second husband from Herve to Javier. I figured Herve was Spanish for Irving but I can’t seem to be able to verify the name…
Despite the fact that there may be more to cut–though I don’t think I’m going to dump any more imagery since I sort of like a lot of imagery in a literary piece–I’m glad to have discovered a theme, motif, and pattern established by the hypertext form. The threads have established themselves in their importance to the main narrative map and their own flow of story.
Not done, but real close I think.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology