Word count: 128789 | Since last entry: -390

My goal for the month of October is to get this novel down to 100,000 words or less. As I’m starting at 130,000 words, that means I have to average 1000 anti-words a day. I thought I’d done that today — surely the cuts I made added up to at least four manuscript pages — but the word counter does not lie; I made less than half of my goal for this first day. But these early chapters have been pretty heavily edited already, and I hope that some future days will involve whacking out large chunks and entire scenes.

In other news… I’ve been asked to join the faculty of the Iron Springs Writers’ Retreat (next June on the Olympic Peninsula); an interview with me has been posted on the Nebula Awards website; my bio has been posted on the website for Wordstock, so I guess my participation there is official; and Danny O’Brien, blogging about my SF in SF reading, referred to me as “The Ted Chiang of Toontown,” which is a mighty fine epithet if you ask me.