Minus 125 pages and Done!

The last few chapters went a lot faster than the muddled middle. I've input all the changes. Here's the final tally:

-From a starting point of 539 pages, I cut 125 pages total and now stand at 414 pages in typescript. That's a cut of approximately 23 percent.

-In printed form, that would be (using the conversion I figured out a few weeks ago) reducing from a starting point of approximately 434 pages to 340 pages currently.

-Word count stands at 123,600 words. Wow. That's shorter than my first draft. I must have less narration and a lot more dialogue in there hogging up white space with fewer words. That's down from 163,700 words in the previous draft.

All of that is on target for the goal I had for this draft, and I'm a lot more comfortable with the shape the book is in, but part of my has the hunch that it ought to be about 40 typescript pages shorter. In terms of word count, I'm 25% over my original concept for the book. Not sure right now how to decide if there's really a problem and if so how to approach it.

Next up . . . I'm going to stew on it. I'm not going to call an official end to draft six for a little while. There is at least a few days of clean up I need to do and maybe more. I'm trying to get it in shape for my next reader and, as before, I want to make handle everything I can think of before I impose on anyone else. I'm going to let it sit for a few days while I catch up on real life and then start the clean up work sometime next week.