Hi everyone!
I write this the morning as we prepare to leave for The Florida Keys, Isla Mirada to be exact. The book is almost done and the Keys sound like the right place for more inspiration, and a little celebration. Jose and Rachel Torres, the main characters in my novel Confessions of an Internet Pornographer settle in the Florida Keys at the end of the book. It is a special place for my family, and I hope to live and write there someday.
I am currently editing my novel for the 23rd time, from start to finish. My wife has read it twice, Elayne my editor has read it four times. Marcella Landres, my proffesional editor dissected it once. But even at the eleventh hour I’m adding and subtracting sentences. I thought it was finished. I certainly thought it was ready when I took it to New York for the 2011 Writer’s Digest Conference. The problem is the changes I'm making are great, and are making he wtory stronger. Much to my shock changing the ending of Chapter 6 made it better. Adding a new scene with dialogue to chapter 7 really worked. Maybe it's not until you read your own novel dozens of edits that you begin to find the true gems of prose in your writing.
My biggest fear is editing it too much. I think there will always be a sentence that can be tightened, endless what if’s. But I believe that if I use the minimum amount of words to tell the story, it will be perfect. It will tell the story I want to tell with brevity, brevity, brevity! That is what will keep me on track. One of the problems of onstant editing is that you can write yourself down paths that lead to nowhere. What is frustrating, is that as I read on, I find new ways to say or show something. When will it end? In the meantime I will read-on, and continue to write into the wind.
Love,
Lucho
P.S.
I just asked my wife to read it for (only) her third time
