Time to lop

Mailed back my copyedits today - extraordinarily expensive but it's tax deductible. Also, extraordinarily slow. It will arrive on the date of my deadline, assuming it's not delayed.

Now I'm nervous about all the things I forgot to change, because I won't get another chance.

But overall, it feels good to be DONE with book 1.

Book 2 is not behaving at the moment. I can see I'm going to have to write about 25,000 words extra on the back end and lop the same amount off the front end to fix the pacing. For this reason I've spent the last couple of days outlining instead of writing. I do love outlining and plotting (I even love writing synopses - yes, it's true) but it doesn't make the manuscript grow longer.