I must have eaten my Editor Wheaties for breakfast this morning. (Which is funny, because I could have sworn I had a ham and cheese bagel sandwich.) I have just trimmed the hell out of Chapter 22, focusing on the sequence where Faanshi, Julian, and the elves scout out the abbey. I decided there was actually quite a bit of cruft verbiage there, and no real need to linger on describing ‘yeah, it’s twilight, the abbey’s busy having vespers, nobody’s out, they get to break into the postern gate because inexperienced Faanshi and one-handed Julian aren’t going to climb over a wall’. ‘Cause seriously, the good stuff? That’s getting them inside to Kestar.
Anyway, I am suddenly quite a bit closer to the 20K goal after all, and Chapter 22 has had about 1,100 words yoinked out of it. Here are last night’s and tonight’s stats.
Edited last night: -314
Edited tonight: -902
Chapter 22 revised total: 4,144
Chapter 23 revised total: 5,177
Chapter 24 revised total: 6,593
Lament of the Dove revised total (fourth draft): 119,744
