I'm totally exhausted. Muse Margaret called and she loved most of the new stuff - she laughed, she was touched. But there were about six things that didn't sit well with her, so we went over them and I just removed all six of them, which cut about four pages and really did tighten things up. One thing she thought was just unnecessary as it didn't really mean anything. Two other things she thought just went on a bit too long, so one I cut in its entirety and the other I shortened by an entire page. She's just unerring in what to fix. She did ask me to take out a paragraph about her, but I refused - she's very shy, but she's been such an important part of my life that to remove that would be folly. Besides, her husband played a part in two upcoming things I'm going to talk about so you have to know the history a little.
And the word of the day is: YOMP!