Minus 5 pages

I'm back to the point where there's a little satisfaction in tracking my page count. My starting number for draft 7 is 393 pp. in typescript. I have made my revisions for the first four chapters for this draft (pending review by my wife) and reduced the total by 5 pp. so that I'm now down to 388 pp.

At that rate--roughly 1 page per chapter--I would get a total of 18 pages out of this draft. Let's round it up to 20 as an ambitious target. Which would result in 373 pp., assuming no radical changes like taking out whole chapters, which still is under consideration. 373 pp. in typescript roughly works out to 300-310 pp. printed.

By the way, my "scrap file" where I paste everything I cut is multiple times longer than the amount that is actually reduced. The total shrank by 5 pp. in the last few days, but the scrap file grew by about 15-20 pp. That's because for every graf I cut out as unnecessary I end up adding in a few lines of other material that now feels more necessary.

Alright, back to work for a p.m. session. I'm about half done with work on Ch. 5.