Editing

I have come to a very serious conclusion: I am no good at editing. I sit down and try to figure out what doesn't belong, what makes something too extensive or tedious or repetitive, but it's too hard to figure out what to let go of. It's an evil thing, editing. It's kind of like sucking most of the life out of a sentence and only leaving enough there to let it survive. Most of my paragraphs are hanging on by a thread. That's what I feel like, anyway.

But, my friend (who has many more editing miles under his belt) says that this is what makes the thing more suspenseful. Well, that makes sense to me, as a reader. But as the creator of the story, it gets rather tricky. How much to give the reader...how much does it take to string her along until the end? That is what I'm deciding to do, in reality. It's kind of like torture. And I'm kind of afraid my reader will starve if I keep everything back, and will keel over midway through the book because I haven't fed her enough all the way through. But if I can balance the two extremes, her appetite will draw her towards the understood promise between writer and reader: a feast at the end.

Which presents another difficulty: is my ending big enough? It can't be too big or too obnoxious...yet it must make the torture worthwhile....

I hate editing.