500 Words!

Delight yourself in the Lord
and He will give you the 
desires of your heart
Psalm 37:4

*Each month as I write on this blog I rarely struggle with the content but do struggle with keeping to the recommended five hundred words.  Recently I’ve been watching a TV series entitled ‘800 words’ where George, a columnist, after the unexpected death of his wife decides to start a new life and moves his family to a small town in New Zealand.   It’s moral values are unfortunately questionable, but these days much on TV has that problem. 

As the title infers George has decided the column he writes should always finish at exactly 800 words, and through each episode he reads part of it, and you see him finish precisely on target.  It appears, unlike me, he doesn’t keep  re-reading what he has written to get to that magic number. 

Over the years in writing this blog each month it has become a source of opportunity, learning and practice to use one word instead of several, but it takes me several hours to accomplish that.  Although I’ve probably improved my honing skills, I wish I could write concisely first time.

I’ve just finished my fourth novel, and have found the plots are becoming more complicated, keeping to 400 pages more difficult, and despite changing the page layout, making the print size smaller, last time I had to add an extra sixteen pages.  And in writing a saga, it’s not just keeping the characters in character, but birthday, anniversaries and previous scenarios have to be remembered!

Right now, I face a far bigger problem than honing down to 500 words!  In each book my aim and upper limit should be 160,000.  I write in blocks of five chapters and so each word count should come in around 30,000.  With twenty five chapters that gives me a leeway for a few thousand extra ones in each chapter, which I’d been using.  At Chapter 20 I had an extraordinary download of a scenario I’ve not read in a story before, which lead wonderfully to the final chapter.  But now written, five chapters have turned into seven, and the count is a whopping 52,000 words! 

If it takes me at least two hours to hone this blog to 500 words how long could it take years to  lose between 20,000 and 30,000 words?.  With a series I may be able to move a part of the plot into book five, but as each title (so far) portrays the character who will take the reader through the next two years with a defined plot outline that could prove difficult.

Over four months I’ve been editing, the sentences maybe tighter in the first twenty chapters I’ve trawled, and the story has improved, but I’ve only lost a 1,000 words!  I need divine inspiration to bring all needed together so my readers are held in a thrall to the final page, and their cry of “Oh no, it can’t be…” will keep them waiting and watching for the next book.  

Ruth Johnson..................................This is 500 words*!