Revisions and Remakes

My agent had asked me to make some minor revisions in my zombie novel THE LIVING END. After excising a whole chapter, I then had to add a short scene, and insert an entire new plot development into the book in the form of three very short interludes and a longer chapter.

Before my revisions the book was right at 100K words in length. After removing the 4K-word chapter that was gumming the works, and adding the new material, the novel stands in at just under 102K words.

So I ended up adding almost 2K words to the total, despite the big chapter cut.

The ironic thing is that the whole revisionary project was interrupted by my own form of real-life surgery. While I was supposed to be cutting and stitching my book, I found myself in the hospital being cut and stitched by a surgeon.

So it goes.

At any rate, I'm done with the book (barring any further requests for revisions from my agent and/or editors). It felt good to close up that particular shop to get back to my current novel project. I hate looking back. On to the future, and all that.

Here's an interesting bit. Two of my favorite filmmakers, the Coen Brothers, are doing a remake of Charles Portis' novel TRUE GRIT. Portis is one of my favorite novelists, and the Coen Brothers are among my favorite writer/director teams. I am very much looking forward to their version of adapting the book to the screen.

"You're obviously not a golfer."