I haven't blogged or written any poetry for what feels like months, yet the mantra of "perseverance furthers" pushes me forward most mornings. Today I started the edits on the last section of STANDING STONES. I wonder if this will be the last edit. Most likely not, but I have cut 15,000 words in about two months.
This kind of editing is rather fun. As I reread the story, the hunt for extra words and passive voice continues. I ask constantly: Is this wording, character, scene, or chapter essential to the story? Does this move the story forward? Words drop off the page as I read the dialogue aloud and and "hear" again how my characters talk.
Now and again, writing friends from several online writing communities share their works in progress, their ambitions, their tenacity, and I am encouraged. My characters seem a bit impatient, but come November 1, I will be ready for the first push into a draft of RIVERS OF STONE. Dougal, Colin, and Mary Margaret, disguised as a young boy, will travel the Atlantic as newly hired servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, join the Fur Brigade Express to trek across Canada and come to Fort Vancouver. It will be late spring, 1843, well before Mount St. Helens' eruption in 1847 or the discovery of gold. Perhaps Colin will sail to the Sandwich Islands or China. Perhaps Dougal will find a fiddle, and Mary Margaret, this woman who worked as a man, will discover herself in the Great Nor'West.
