The grand finale of a structural edit: weeding out words and edging closer to the finish line

Writing Journal: When She Was Gone #3

You’d think that by Story No. 9 it would get easier to blast through the first draft of a new novel. Alas, it doesn’t. At least, not for me. (Insert ‘silent scream’ or ‘melting face’ emoji here …) All of my books have had their own birthing process (to borrow a very cliched but apt analogy for book production). Some move steadily through the different s…