I'm just saying. If I have to remove those 25,000 or whatever words, that's not the end of the world. I could always save that stuff. Some of it might work okay in a different story.

Or...if I have to remove the other 50,000 words and write some new bits (!!) to bridge over what's missing. If it results in a better story...that's okay.

The point isn't how long it is. The point is that it should not be an unmitigated pile of crap. At this moment, the steaming slash story and the reeking case story are facing off...waiting for the hands of the clock on the town hall to strike twelve.

One of them has to go.

Me, I'm a big believer in peaceful coexistence, but I can't convince those two of the merits of this approach.

Anyhow, all melodrama aside, I finished entering the last round of edits and rewrites, put in page breaks between every scene in the story, and sorted the scenes into "case" or "romance." (Okay...it's not that simple. Many scenes have bits of both)

Then I reprinted the whole mess. I now have piles of scenes that are overall one or the other, case or romance.

Now I'm giving myself a few days' distance. Time to calm down. Become marginally more objective.

Sunday morning, when I'm fresh, I'll sit down, read each "story" by itself, and see what I've got.

I have no particular objection to removing half the story. I just need to figure out which half.

(Sometimes I wonder when I decided that it was a good idea to share, in a more-or-less public forum, every speed-bump and pothole I encounter while writing this thing?)

(Ed. - You didn't decide. It's your massive self-centrism. Anne - I'm not sure that's a word. Ed. - You know what I mean. Now that you know someone is reading this, you should stop treating this blog as a private conversation between your personalities. Anne - As soon as I have a response to that, I'm going to come back here and wither you with sarcasm.)