On the chopping block

Today I've put my own precious prose on the chopping block and it hurts. The conference I'm attending in Prague in November requires that a draft of the paper be submitted by this Friday, and the draft can be no longer than 2600 words. I'm cutting down a larger essay to present at the conference, but to make it fit within the limit, I'll have to cut out around 4000 words. Ouch.

Of course cutting a paper down to size is easier than expanding it, especially when I can chop out whole sections in one fell swoop. But then I discover that I've destroyed the connective tissue between ideas, so I have to add a sentence or two to tie the remaining pieces together. It's chop, add, chop, add all day long.

And then I encounter a passage I simply hate to sacrifice. It's so clever or original or perfect in context, but will it fit in the slimmed-down version of the paper or will it just sit there like a partially severed thumb dangling from the body of the piece? It's hard to say. So I keep it in, check the word count, trim it a little, check the word count, put it aside to think about later.

After I get the paper trimmed to size, I'll have to go back through and change the citation format. I generally use MLA in-text citations and a Works Cited, but this conference requires footnotes and a bibliography in Oxford style--plus British spellings throughout. Okay, I'll work on that...maybe I can find a proofreader eager to sniff out my non-British spellings.

First, though, I've got to get back to the chopping block. Caution: butcher at work. Watch your step there--you wouldn't want to slip and fall on that severed syntax all over the floor.