Revising

I'm at chapter 17 now on the revision of the Law of the Splintered Paddle. My goal is to eliminate one page out of ten and so far I'm able to do it. I thought the writing was pretty tight before, but as I go back through it, I'm finding lots of places to tighten.

Here's how I do it. I figure that one page is 25 lines and that there are about 100 paragraphs in ten pages, so all I have to do is shorten 25 paragraphs, one fourth of them, by one line. The top paragraphs are the ones with short tails, i.e., a single word or two on the last line. I go into those paragraphs and look for a word or two that can be eliminated. I look for unnecessary adjectives or adverbs, or prepositional phrases or other clauses. I can also check long sentences and see if they can't be rewritten to save a word.

I'm also hoping that my planned revision of the section with Pinky will eliminate a lot of pages, perhaps even a chapter or two.

On another topic, I did 18 miles yesterday with Ernie. We did it in the afternoon and it was tough! Not only hot, but we ran through Traditons on the concrete cart paths and our feet were killing us. It didn't help that two miles was on a gravel washboard road and we felt every stone.

This week is the last heavy mileage week--two fives, an eight and a twenty. After that, the taper begins. I'm feeling good at this point. Looking forward to the race.