First round of novel edits are done. Final count: 286 pages, single-spaced; 41 chapters; 147,700 words. In all, about 20,000 words were cut. I’d like to trim it down further but I think I’ve done as much as I can without more major surgery.

This may in fact end up being the last round of edits, depending. I think what I have here is saleable. I think it’s good. I think parts of it are extremely good. We’ll see. Ultimately, it’s not up to me where it goes or how it finds a home. But I do think it’s well-positioned to go somewhere and do something.

Reading it over after two-plus months without looking at it has been an interesting experience, rather like sitting on one’s hand until it goes numb and no longer seems to belong to you. Except your hand is a bunch of words and you’ve been sitting on it for two months and you discover that it looks a lot better than you recall, and it kind of cheers you up for the rest of the day.

The co-author is working through the changes as I type. We hope to have this thing in submittable shape in the next few weeks.

I’m not sure what possessed me to try to write a book in my first year of graduate school, but I’m now willing to state for the record that it has not been an utter disaster. This does not mean that I would recommend this course of action to others.