For the past three weeks, I’ve been buried in copy edits. And when I say buried, I mean it—whole afternoons lost to wrestling commas, smoothing sentences, and trying to understand why a single page took me fifteen minutes to get right.
The result? My manuscript went from 93,824 words down to 82,785. That’s close to 11,000 words cut—about a 12% trim. Painful? Yes. At times it felt like watching whole paragraphs vanish into the ether.
But here’s the thing: the book is better for it. I gave it one final read-through. The writing is tighter, crisper, and far more impactful. Major scenes carry more weight. What started as a grueling exercise turned into something oddly satisfying. The 33% through the manuscript mark did it for me. That’s where I hit this little thrill of rearranging 10 words into 8 being a hugely gratifying win.
So, while the process was tough, I’m grateful I pushed through. The book feels stronger. I learned a lot. I’m going to add a formal ‘trim editing’ step into the process for the next novel. I think I’ll fold it into the incorporation of Beta feedback revision. This was something I’d been doing during revisions, but in a low-key way (I’d strike a sentence here or there, remove some adjectives or descriptions, but not really focused on fat trimming). Seeing the results side by side (edited versus original), there’s a lot of opportunity there for me.
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