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When I finished the first draft of the new novel, it had about 115,000 words. I realized that it was too long. My first project was to cut out unnecessary scenes and then unnecessary words. I ended up with a little over 87,000 words. I knew I must’ve scrambled up things so they didn’t make sense or done something else that was equally bad. I ask for proofreaders and some of my friends volunteered. Almost immediately, one of my proofreaders sent me an email pointing out that I had made an error and had repeated the same text in two places. It was a repeat of almost 2700 words. It reduced the word count to just a tad over 85,000 words.

I will add that it is difficult to cut scenes and sometimes even a single word. It was important to me that the love between Billy and Sam, his wife, be well portrayed. It was even more important to display that after a particularly bad time in their marriage. I had originally included the love scene between them. I realized I only needed to include four words instead of a major scene. Here’s how I did it. Billy shows Sam a stand of mature pine trees on the farm where he grew up before they are married. He tells her he often came there. Billy explains he just loves to listen to the sound of the wind in the pines and smell their fragrance. That stand of pines is his Cathedral. Later in the novel, when they buy some land to build their house on, they discover it has a beautiful stand of pine trees. It becomes their Cathedral. Sam wants to use it and does as the place to conceive their first child. From that point on, they describe their intimate moments as “going to the Cathedral.”