*ignore at your leisure*

[oloriel]

Look, I know that you've got your rules.
But then, when someone else had 15,000 characters and wasn't sure they'd manage to shorten it down to 10,000, you said "If you don't manage, hand it in anyway; better too much than nothing at all." And now I ask and you say No way? Fine, I suppose you've got enough stories by now then.

I've shortened away everything that had to be shortened in order to make it better, and I got stuck at 12,500.
I've shortened away things that I wanted to keep but that could be dropped without too much pain, and I got stuck at 12,000.
I've shortened away stuff that already hurt to cut, and I got stuck at 11,000.
Which is still too much.
If I cut away more, there won't be any story left. Unless I write it in Japanese, which would probably miraculously bring it down to 5000. (God, I wish my Japanese was good enough to do that, just to see their faces.)

Which, I suppose, means buggre alle this for a larke.

I know the world has more important problems than this, but I was actually proud of the Erudamn thing. And damnit, people even liked it.

GNAH.

[/immature ranting]

EDIT: Ach, und JETZT merkt sie, dass da diverse andere eingereichte Geschichten auch viel zu lang sind! JETZT! Hat sie also vorher nicht mal überprüft! Hätt ich dumme Kuh mal bloß nicht nachgefragt. Das hat man von seiner Ehrlichkeit. *wüt*

Comments

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

I hear your pain. But any serious editor will tell you that to really improve a story, you should cut 50% of the first version.

I don't think I'll manage to cut 50% of Atlantis, but by now I know that it is possible to cut away lots of passages that it would have really hurt me to cut if the story was still at the delicate stage of "the first draft which I love and which is dearer to my heart than any prospective child of mine". And the story really, really gets better that way.

If you still have trouble cutting from 11,000 to 10,000 characters (is that with or without spaces?), send it over and I'll suggest how to get there. As the story is not my heart-and-brain-child, the surgery will be easier for me to perform.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I did that. It had 25000 characters before the first cut, and 15000 after. The cut down to 11000 (or, strictly speaking, 10628; I was rounding up) already went beyond the 50% (without spaces, by the way, thank Eru for little favours, not that it matters much). And the story was pretty concise to begin with. Trimming off the baby fat, ok, I agree with that. But it still should be allowed some muscles and not have to be a skeleton. If I manage to muster the motiviation, I'll try to figure out how to apply something zorn told me in her comment to the story. If not... quite honestly I'm sick of trimming the language on the story that is about the love of language. Either I manage something else that I can hand in at 9999 characters, or I'll just pass that one up.