Tonight I pulled out the Word document that represents the only tangible evidence of The Novel and gave it a long hard stare. Then I put it away and dissembled for a while, bathing, drying up, making tea, checking the kids, that kind of thing.

Then I looked again. I looked at each bit of it and made a big list of those bits. A big list of stuff that happens in The Novel.

Terrible realisation: much of it is pants. Not all of it. Some bits I’m pleased with. But some bits are pants.

I want to tear the pants bits out, because they add nothing to the story. They just re-tell what the reader already knows or can infer. They treat the reader like a dummy. This is a Bad Thing.

But I fear the short novel. I worry that reducing The Novel from its current 89,721 words to (I guess) around 65,000 will reduce its artistic value. Surely this is nonsense. After all, The Commitments only ran to about 44,000 words. Espedair Street was 92,000 but not one of Banks’ best (in my humble, craven, worthless opinion). Length does not equal quality.

Repeat after me: length does not equal quality.

Sigh. Perhaps tomorrow I will begin trimming.