Spent the last few days preparing and sending off to an agent who shocked me by responding within the hour, requesting the full ms. I've got so used to having weeks to wait while the first three chapters are looked over that this came as quite a shock to the system.

I found it easy to take out a couple of thousand words, too, which I probably shouldn't admit, but I can't lie about it. Mostly odd words that were superfluous, little bits of repetition or bits of backstory that weren't really required.

I'm going to print the whole thing out tomorrow, and I'll probably find more to take out. Generic nouns, verbs that have adjectives and adverbs attached, for example. I think I've got out of the dreaded habit of writing "she moved slowly" and now think of "saunters, strolled, ambled." Avoiding "Is" and "are", "was" and the -ing form of the verb - these are all good things. So is eliminating "there is/there are/ it is" and all those crutch words - we've all got them and some times it's quite a surprise to realise what they are.

Now I'm going back to my wip; chapter thirty-three - possibly the last chapter, depending how my protagonist feels about it. All I have to do is write it. Sounds so easy...