Cut and Paste

So, by Wednesday night Sister Act's opening will have changed quite dramatically. True fans will have to come to every single preview to catch each version of the show before it is lost forever to musical theatre history.

It won't be the first change. I was told by a very reliable source (the musical supervisor himself, don'tcha know) that something like seventeen numbers have been cut or rewritten in the four years since Sister Act was first reborn as a musical.

Seventeen.

Got me thinking. I'm halfway through writing my first novel. Well, I say halfway. I have actually finished it insomuch as I've got from beginning to end. Unfortunately it needs so much editing that it's going to take me at least as long again to get it into a state I feel happy for anyone to read, let alone think about publishing. Part of the reason for my starting a blog was to make me braver at publishing immediately. There's something exhilarating about writing, editing and hitting "Publish", all in the space of an hour. Blogging is the fast food of literature. Write and go.

It's been good for me. I'll be starting back on the novel (as well as getting a few more blogs out than I've managed lately) as soon as rehearsals have calmed down a bit, but if I'm honest, the prospect of such a huge edit frightens me. My blog feels friendly, colloquial. The novel's a different story (sorry for the excruciating pun). It seems more serious; intimidatingly so. When I'm editing the book, I can spend hours agonising over a semi-colon. That slightly unnecessary one in the previous sentence, for example.

I know. What a loser. It'll never get finished at this rate.

There's also the small matter of making quite a substantial change to the ending, and adding a new but vital twist to the plot, not to mention the fact that about two-thirds of the way through I decided a character wasn't working so I just stopped writing him with no explanation. I've yet to go back and remove him from the rest of the story.

It was scaring me more than I cared to admit.

But today I had a new thought. If the likes of Alan Menken and Glenn Slater aren't afraid to throw material away - material that some writers could only dream about creating - than I am not, either.

Blue pencil at the ready.