I was at the point of taking individual words out, turning them over in my mental hands, looking back at the page, and saying "Nope...I really do need a noun in this sentence..." I can't see the work clearly right now, so it's time to back off, give it 24 hours, and the take another look.
I'd like to shrink it another 750 words--that would put it just under 170,000. That's less than one word per page to come out...but we're down to the meat...and I've been slicing off individual muscle fibers already.
It's a big story. And it all wants in. The characters (the POV characters, of course, but also the first-line non-POVs) are clamoring at me. So are trees, horses, and landscapes. ("You don't understand...in the book you don't even have a contract for yet, I'll be VERY important...")
But I've closed the file, saved it to external storage as well as on the disk, and am refusing to look at it. (Its next volume has brightly announced that if I'm not going to work on revisions, surely I can do some first-drafting over there...)
