Trimmed another 3,000 words off the draft this week.
Only three chapters left to truncate. Then I can start in on the growing list of problems I’m seeing as I go: personality quirks that got dropped from later chapters, items whose properties changed without reason, place names that got swapped.
At this point, I’m starting to look forward to doing the final copyediting run-through, because it’ll mean all these other issues have been dealt with.
Till then, I’ll keep cutting.
I’m amazed at how many words I’ve cut from my ms, and it’s not even like I’m cutting full scenes. A paragraph here, a sentence there… They really add up!