Chopping words

I'll be slicing, dicing, rearranging and cussing today. I hope the book publisher doesn't read my blog. If he does, he will probably never hire me to do a writing job again. In fact, in one of my emails last night to his appointed "sheriff" of writing operations, I opened the way for the axe.

A year ago, the publisher assigned me a piece dealing with history of white settlement around Lake Pend Oreille. The deadlines have changed several times, with the most recent this past Monday. One item of contention that has not changed is the expected word count---3,000. This assignment will go in a book, not a newspaper or magazine.

Would someone out there please humor me and tell me that they, too, would have a difficult time using just 3,000 words to pen a history of white settlement in Bayview, Lakeview, Clark Fork, Hope, Trestle Creek, Kootenai, Ponderay, Sandpoint, Dover, Laclede, Seneacquoteen, Priest River, Glengary, Garfield Bay, and Talache? Those are the communities that still exist; several rose and fell quickly.

My incomplete manuscript this morning numbers 17,000 words. To satisfy the wishes of the assignment, I'm thinking of taking the Julius Caesar succinct approach: They came. They said, "Well, golly gee, what a purty place! They called in the developers.

Amen. I'm off to get the axe---one way or the other.