Something bold

I started something bold yesterday. The decision to do it wasn't easy months ago but when it re-surfaced two days ago, it was easy because it seemed so right.

I am rewriting "Death at the Jungle-bunny Journal" in first-person.

I resisted this idea for months because, as a journalist, I'm far more comfortable writing in third-person. In fact, other than writing editorials for the Philadelphia Tribune, which were first-person plural, I have only written a handful of articles in first-person throughout my entire professional career. To tell the truth, I can only remember four instances.

But this venture, for me, is bold, radical, revolutionary. I was struggling with how to improve the novel and this came to mind.

I started yesterday, eliminating any and all chapters in which Jason Crown does not appear. That means I cut the novel down from 78,000 words to about 45,000, 5,000 short of what I need for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest in two months. But some of the information in the eliminated chapters will still be needed. I will just have to include it in another way.

I lost a lot of writing that I loved, particularly a scene between two teens in which the girl tells the boy she is pregnant. That was a particularly well-written chapter but it is no more.

After I go through everything I currently have, I will have to consider what is missing and how I need to add it. There will be a number of scenes I will have to add. In the end, I imagine the novel will top out at about 70,000 words.

So, that's it. A lot of hard work ahead but it is new and exciting. And I'm just waiting to see where it goes. If nothing else, I still have numerous earlier versions in third-person.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.