At the Festival, I received specific advice about one of my novels from two literary agents and an editor, and one of the suggestions was this: make sure you know what you want from the story.
I think this has been one of my greatest problems with this manuscript - I haven't been entirely sure where I'm going with the story, or which part of the story is most important. On the train home I had an epiphany about my writing, realising that I have been including so much back-story in my novels that they have become a huge part of the novel themselves, to the extent that the story itself was getting lost. To that end, I have slashed my novel, removing all scenes that were purely back-story, putting only a few aside for part of their content to be salvaged.
This has left me with, at best, 35000 words. This is half of what I want the finished manuscript to be. I have a lot of work to do. But you know what? I'm excited! More excited than I have been about my writing for ages. And that's what counts.
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