Reflections upon a Hard Edit
1) If it weren't for Aaron Copland and Fallia I would have filleted myself with a rollerball at eleven-fifteen and called it good.
2) First instincts are good instincts. If you wrote it in spirit of penance, because you had to it will be pedestrian and overwritten. We took out the first two pages completely. Some of it should be reincorporated. Most of it should be taken out behind the barn and shot.
3) Do not try to do so much in the first thousand words. It is not like the Hundred Days. Your reader will forgive you if you wait until he's relevant before you describe the protagonist's best friend.
4) Jesus, they're dashes, not an excuse for a bad drinking game. Although, the way I use them, we could argue about it.
5) Editing is a full-body, full-of-caffeine, full-spirit process.
This last is actually the most interesting aspect to me, especially as a signifier of how I've changed.
For most of my writing life, for one reason or another, I've hated revision. Some of it is that I hate rewriting, when you fall asleep on your keyboard and wake up and realize you've accidentally deleted v.1 of the scene that you loved so much and now you have to do it again AGH. I can usually recall the best and beloved bits, but not the nice gristle between them and that's actually what I treasure most in my writing. Nice gristle.
But there are other reasons, too, and I remembered some of them last night as I watched my wordcount drop. What you take out when you cut isn't just words, it's sense and connections you felt (at one time, for whatever reason) you needed to draw for the reader. If you cut heavily, it's very hard to find all those threads again. You need a total mastery of what you meant to discuss, need to have the anatomy of the piece down pat so that you can think back and remember where there are names for you to change, whether you ever pick up that cue again.
It's not that it isn't rewarding --but cutting three pages worth of beginning makes it hard to get your feet back under you. The good news is that what's left are the strongest parts of the first chapter.
Also, I don't understand how people out there post fiction in installments. Maybe their Betas aren't as thorough as mine.
Finally, I have it on good authority that my title sucks. (And lo, it does!) So if people end up with title suggestions man, I will take them.