Ugh! I gotta start all over again.

I spent last two days writing a chapter. A difficult chapter that details the beginnings of the Korean War. After two days of working on it and having only 5 pages to show for it, I came to a horrible conclusion - I need to scrap this and start all over again. Even though I'm emotionally attached to this and like every word in the chapter (yes, because I wrote it), my book would be better WITHOUT it. The horror!

My first draft is almost done, except for the last 1/5 of the book which deals with the Korean War. I've done enough research (I think...) and I'm ready to write, but I want to make this section dynamic. I mean, how can a war, any war be boring and static? But the engineer (the analytical geek) in me wants to cover it from the beginning and that's what I've done. But I know, in my heart, that's the boring part that my editor will tell me to cut it. I can see the conversation in my head (this is the editor who challenged me to cut 50 pages to 3 pages. I did it. I wasn't happy about having to do it. But she was right. It made the book better).

"Jennifer, you can do this. You can cut this to...0 pages!"

"Uh...uh, but it tells a beautiful story of the beginnings of the Korean War."

"But it doesn't add anything to the story. In fact, it SLOWS down the story. Cut it. It won't make any difference to your book."

That's the sad truth. It won't make any difference to my book. So, I'm saving her the time to tell me to cut it when I eventually hire her to do a final read through. I guess I'm learning something, or remembering something my editor's been trying to teach me for a long time.

1. Make every sentence earn the right the occupy the valuable space in my book.

2. Make a dynamic start by starting in the middle of the action (this is a real challenge for me because I love 1200+ page books where you get gnats ass detail about everything. But I know most readers out there don't want that. So, I'm saving my special edition of gnats ass detail of this book for myself and a very select friends who appreciate that sort of thing).