Back to work--line editing

I found a way to make some progress today without having all the comments back from my reader, and I got in a good a.m. session like has been my habit in previous drafts.

I realized that there are some key episodes in the book that are very unlikely to be cut and that I could probably risk doing line editing in those spots. As I was saying all through the last draft, I'm eager to start working at the line level and trying to get the language to pop a lot more. I want to be doing the scalpel work. On paper, with a red pen. As long as there was still "developmental" work to be done, I postponed that.

So that's what I did this morning. Really it was one complete chapter, Ch. 4. Since in the last revision, I shortened most of the chapters and broke up long ones into shorter chapters, I think it's going to work out that they can be worked on in one session. This was a 20-page chapter and I worked through it in about 90 minutes.

So, this strategy should keep me busy for a few days next week. There are a handful of places where I can probably safely do this kind of work without getting too far ahead of my reader's pending comments.