Saturday, March 19, 2011

Papers Finished....sort of...

Well, I finished both papers today...

but I suffer from the challenge of being verbose. Both exceed the page limits.

One only by 2 pages, but they are 2 full pages of already well-written and well-thought out points, which will still be challenging to cut back.

The other paper, though, I have currently written 37 pages for a 20 page limit. Hmmmm.... That one is going to be harder to work down. I will be cutting out entire sections, paragraphs, taking the AXE to it... a challenge, for sure, since it isn't just tweaking of sentences or paring down little things.

Then again, sometimes choosing to eliminate entire ideas completely makes for faster editing than the little 'how can I say this more concisely' kind of editing that the first paper will require.

Do any of you other writers out there suffer from my problem? Or is it just me who writes way too much...

The good news is, if I work really hard this week and stay on task, I should be able to get both papers completely edited and turned in by next Saturday... which will give me almost a full week and a half of breathing room before the lil one arrives! I am thrilled, let me tell ya! That way I won't be so stressed out if she arrives early...

7 comments:

  1. Oh yeah. I've cut like 15,000 words (about 50 pages in this case) off a manuscript before. (Of course, it was 350 pages/101,000 words before, so it's not quite as must percentage-wise.) And then I added back 10,000 new words, and then I cut out 5000 of those.

    Sometimes not having a set page limit is even harder—then you don't know what the "right" length is!

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  2. Wowzers. That's a lot of writing. It's been so long since I've been in school and written papers that 37 pages sounds insane. I'm impressed though. I'd probably be the student who finishes with 18 pages and has to BS another 2. :) Good luck finishing up and getting ready for baby!

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  3. When are the papers due? I've got an M.S. in English and I'd be happy to take a look at them if you want. Let me know. Congrats on being so close to done!

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  4. Wow! I have to say, editing my own papers, for flow and content--and in your case length--is so much fun! Writing it is the hard part; it's tweaking it, perfecting it that makes it so awesome!

    What are these papers about?

    And way to go to get them done early (hopefully) before baby comes! I can't believe it's so close!!

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  5. yay! go you! inspiration yet again. I would probably use the baby as my excuse for not getting them done earlier . . . ok, maybe not really.

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