Last week I wrote a couple of pieces on my blog about my experiences with the French medical services concerning a heart problem I experienced over here.
A couple of commenters were kind enough to say that they enjoyed it and thought I should submit it to the Irish Times to be included in their Health Supplement.
I decided to give it a go, and cobbled together a few of the pieces I had blogged and sent them into the editor.
Yesterday an encouraging reply came back from the editor, she would like to reproduce my piece in the supplement but I would have to reduce it to a mere 900 words.
I checked the piece I had submitted, it was 2060 words long.
I was going to have to reduce it by over a half to have it accepted.
Well it was a literary version of Sophie’s Choice as I then decided which of my verbal children I was going to have to excise.
The first culling was without doubt the hardest, I discarded, I thought, ruthlessly, then counted the result- I had only managed to lose about 300 words.
After that it became easier, I began to realise that I really had to decide which bits I wanted to save, let them remain sacred, and hack heartlessly at the rest.
By cull number 4, I had reduced the piece to about 1200 words – my goal was in sight.
Cull number 5 was different, I nit-picked my way through the text, dropping single words and changing phrases to be more economical with the text.
Next word count came in at 890.
Bingo!
This has now gone off to the Irish Times for their consideration; I’ll let you know if it is accepted.
All in all a fascinating exercise but, honestly, I preferred the original.