I asked for two more weeks, and got it. But my relationship with deadlines is different.

You'll make it.

Thank you! It helps to know people want it when it's done.

You don't know me either, but I agree with everything that medievalist said. Also, remember when you cut out scenes; I want to read that stuff too! I have read Paks multiple times and I wish that I could read everything that you cut out of that.

Oh...actually you don't...I mean, my good friend E, who read Paks as I was writing it, stopped me one day and said "You know, I now understand how miserable it is to march in the mud. Every single day...it's miserable...enough with the damned mud and have something *happen*." That's because the original-original ms. had every single day...all of them...including the ones in which nothing much happened, let alone plot-wise.

And I had the habit (from writing plays) of having important things repeated by different people so that you could not miss any detail I thought mattered.

There's only one chapter of original Paks I wish people had read but it's now lost and gone forever in the boxes I can't find.

I don't think it counts as turning something in late if you didn't ask for the extension but merely took advantage of the offer. :-)

Yes I agree, that isn't turning it in late. I also agree we will wait with patience.

Do you really need to be that finicky, cutting down individual words? surely the publisher rounds to the nearest hundred or thousand words, right?

Yes and no (don't you love that kind of answer?) The publisher is concerned with production costs and pricing: books are usually issued in certain standard word ranges. If your book falls outside that range, it's less likely to do well in "numbers" (what the beancounters count.)

So sometimes you really do have to count word by word (my first fiction sale came from cutting down a 2300 word story to 1497, because the editor wanted 1500.) And if you have to cut a story by 10%, it will look less hacked-at if you cut one or two words in each paragraph, just sort of snugging it up anywhere it's at all loose. (10% cuts are pretty easy...more than that and it gets tougher...and tougher...)

In this case, a 235,000 word book is just flat too big. (Unless you're a politician or movie star, that is...)

And it's not as if you want them splitting it up, like they did Bujold's first two _Sharing Knife_ books.

Fortunately, anticipation is one of my favorite things. But then, I'm a bit of a masochist. Not enough to be a writer, though.

;)