I just ran through the whole book over the past three days, marking it up, figuring out what had to get fixed. I was pleasantly surprised that pages 100-267 were not in as bad of shape as I thought they were going to be.

I put my anal-retentive scheduling skills in high gear, and it looks like the whole shebang will be done and ready to go out to potential agents by September 12th.

I really feel some momentum now, and and urgency to get the thing out. The subject of raw milk and cheese made form raw milk is getting some press. I need to get the damn thing out.

So I have begun the daunting task of reading through my second draft as a whole. Right now it's 267 pages. From some editing I did recently, I am guessing I can cut out about 30 pages on my next draft, but I will probably add back in about 20.

The main thing I asked when writing the second draft was, "Do I have the right people in the room for each of these scenes?" This time I will finesse it by asking, "Do I have them in the right frame of mind?" That might involve cutting entire scenes.

I will then go back through and do some heavy editing, giving it the ol' Strunk and White Treatment. Mainly, I'll remove unnecessary words. I did that kind of edit on Chapter 8 and cut out an entire page out of 13. That's not bad.

Turns out "Ring Around the Rosie" is not a creepy rhyme about the plague.

Dispatch From the Front

Me: I think you kids like the idea of Pop Tarts more than actually eating them. What do you think of that?

Virginia: I don't even know what you mean.

Graham: Me too.

Frank: Me too.

Henry: Me too

I finally dumped Sprint as my mobile phone provider and I have never been happier. It cost me $200 to leave them, but it was worth it; now I have a new Blackberry phone and service in my basement office. Joy, oh joy.