The Final Draft

On Thursday last week I finished what I thought would be the final draft of my book. Except that it wasn't. I thought I was all done and the story would just need proofing for typos, grammar etc but when I totted up the word count I found it had increased by at least 20%. All feelings of satisfaction ebbed away as it dawned on me that I would have to cut, cut and cut some more to get the wordcount down again. I'm now trying to decide which scenes will stay and which will go, trying to comfort myself with the thought I could use some of the cut scenes in a future book instead. But even with my most trusted readers trying to help me it's still so hard to decide! I'm currently itching to print it out so I can do a proper edit but there's no paper and not much ink left. I've just placed an order on the site that sounds like a very long river and I'm waiting for their delivery. My plan is to print out the whole darn thing and lay it out scene by scene. Maybe then I'll see what needs to go and what should stay? Maybe...