Meredith Mansfield, Author

The curse of revisions isn’t having to do them.  I really don’t mind revisions.  I know writers who have a hard time forcing themselves to revise, but I actually still really like these characters.  I don’t mind visiting with them again.

No, for me at least, the curse is that my story always seems to end up longer after the revisions. 

I’m about half-way through the current rewrite of THE IGNORED PROPHECY and, counter to my hopes, I haven’t ended up cutting it down any.  In fact, it’s grown by about three thousand words.

I did succeed, I hope, in tightening up the beginning.  It’s one chapter shorter, anyway.  But that’s been outweighed by additional content to get deeper into the main character’s point of view and by a few other minor points I’ve added as I’ve gone along, especially to give better motivation to one of the supporting characters.  I’m adding a scene right now, which means still more length.  However, I think this scene will help to show the main character’s internal conflict and how far he’s willing to go to get answers at this point.  So it’s needed.

There are a couple of places up ahead where I might end up cutting some material, but the best I can hope for at this point is to break even.  That means that there will have to be at least one more pass through specifically to find things to cut.  That’s my least favorite kind of revision, but sometimes necessary.

It always seems to work this way for me.  Every revision grows a little until I have to do a final revision to chop it back down.