Am I Going Fast Enough?

I gave myself one hundred days. I've got sixty-one left.

Saturdays and Sundays seem to be terrible for trying to make any progress to speak of on the three goals. I've still got to make my way through 26 Chapters of Vitamin F.

I'm trying to consolodate my reading. Since I finished off Small Favor late last week, I've tried to stick with The Sword of Shannara, but I've gotten a bit of that sensation I get when I stop reading a book. Terry Brooks is a fine writer, but there are times when he just goes on and on with his descriptions. He sparingly adds characters and there's been a distinct sense throughout the book--there's a big world and we have to care about it. Some of those paragraphs just run on too damn long. The last chapter I read had three paragraphs in the first four pages.

I understand the need for long paragraphs. I wish I had longer paragraphs myself. But in modern commercial writing, shorter paragraphs make for a faster pace. There are two key notes my readers keep coming to me with after reading the first chapter of Vitamin F: "I really like Delilah," and "Where's the next chapter?"

Look at Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. He uses some spectacular descriptions, but his paragraphs aren't usually all that long. He usually only needs about two sentences to describe how a place or a character looks. Richer detail comes from redressing those settings later.

So when I look at my text and see that I've slashed six pages, I feel a great sense of accomplishment, especially given all the factors that are making it take up more pages. But there are times when I look over a chapter and think about killing the whole thing--the chapter, not the book.