Humming Right Along

I'm on my last read of the first book I finished writing before I ask another friend to read it. I'm still trying to cut the length, but it's hard. It's like slowly cutting the fingertips off of my child before moving on to the knuckles. In other words, it's a long, slow, painful process.

The good news is that I'm not finding a lot of mistakes or things that need to be changed. The bad news is that it's still hard to make substantial cuts. The other good news is that I still like the story. I still love my characters and the key scenes. Of course, that's what makes it so hard to find things to cut. Oh, well.

I haven't been able to do a lot of reading during the past week, because work's been busy, so I haven't read at lunch, and it's been hot, which makes me tired and unwilling to do a lot of things, including sitting and reading. But now it's the weekend, so maybe I can make progress on "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell for my book club, which meets in two weeks, or "Anthropology of an American Girl" by Hilary Thayer Hamann, which I'm reading for fun.

I bought "Anthropology," because the title was intriguing and the story borders on my two favorite genres -- women's literature and young adult fiction. Mostly, I bought it because of the blurbs written by reviewers and other writers. One reviewer said it was literary crack. And I'm an addict, so crack's going in my shopping bag.

So far, I'm not in love with the main character, Eveline, but I'm getting there. I'm still intrigued by her story. I want to see where she goes next. And that's what's important, right?