This Halloween I gave myself a writing trick and a treat.

The treat is a completed first draft of a novel. Bones, if you will. The trick is the impending self-editing.

In July I finished the draft of book 2 in my Runevision Mystery series. I took a break from the novel and moved on to work on poetry, short stories, and necessary non-writing projects.

This month I returned to book 2 with a fresh eye, assessing readability, plot structure, and continuity.

Now begins the brutal task of ‘killing my darlings’ as I revise an estimated 250,000+ words. Along the way I must slash two sub-plots that developed outside my initial outline. (In my defense, they seemed like good ideas at the time.)

Bringing the work back from the proverbial grave through self-editing seems appropriate to this time of year, doesn’t it?