More fixes--plan for more cutting

I put in an extra session yesterday afternoon doing some clean up that didn't require a lot of concentration and my usual a.m. session today tackling some of the tougher issues. I hope I'm not just kidding myself out of fear and fatigue, but the fixes turned out not to be that tough. Just a quick snip here and there in those scenes and it seemed all better.

Next I want to work on length a little more. Out of the 19 chapters, there are 4 that are especially long. They are probably just too long by any standard and they are definitely enough longer than the other chapters that it gives an imbalanced feeling. So next week I think I'm going to go through those chapters one at a time with a goal of getting another 5 pages out of each one. They will still be the longest chapters, but they won't blow the curve. I'm not sure how I can cut them that much though. I've certainly cut everything obvious and much more than I really wanted.

Along the way I'll handle some of the smaller cleanup issues and that should end this round of edits, ahead of my target of April 15.

Even that won't end the cutting, but the rest I plan to get out of close line editing in the next round of edits. Instead of cutting whole scenes, it will be tightening by one phrase and one word at a time. I'm really looking forward to that.