The word count for The Truffle Book has been ratcheting up steadily over the last five weeks, and I’m well within sight of my 40,000 word target. Today, however, I took a step backwards. I cut a huge chunk out of one chapter because I’m in severe danger of overshooting that target. I cut 2,500 words, but then wrote 1,000 so the net loss wasn’t too dramatic. It was mainly undigested notes pasted in, so not a great loss.

My style is hardly terse, in fact it’s rather discursive (but not flowery, heaven forbid), so my editor will be able to trim some fat, but if I go too far over the top the page count of the book will go up, costs will rise, and that’ll either put pressure on my margins or the finished price of the paper book. Not a problem for the pdf version, except perhaps for bandwidth issues. Quality words only from here on in.

I’m two weeks over my original schedule for finishing the text, so hitting my early May target for publication is now unlikely, but I don’t care (much). It’s such a relief to be making significant progress, and I have a feeling that some of the stuff is not too bad. Makes me smile, anyway.

I’m beginning to think about pictures and illustrations. I’m planning to buy a 35mm slide scanner to handle all my slides (there are quite a few from all over Europe and NZ, and buying a scanner is near enough the same price as having the scans done professionally), but I still need to source others. Another bridge to cross (in due course).