With the first draft of the book completed, I have begun the lengthy process of editing. This will involve numerous passes, going in both directions, until the book emerges in its final form.
I finished the First Pass this morning. I went through the whole book onscreen, correcting errors (not many of them), cutting unnecessary text and rewriting weaker passages. Some new text had to be written. For example, a couple of foreshadows were needed for developments much later in the book. Other than that, some passages were trimmed whole others were fleshed out a bit more.
The result is that the overall text is now more than 5,000 words shorter than it was. Fourteen pages have been cut out in all. That is just the beginning of the process, though. Now I get down to basics, print out the whole text and go through it with highlighters. It is quite likely that the text cutting is far from finished. I will keep you posted.
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