Surgical Strike

I know this may be a disturbing image for some - heck, I get a little twitchy myself, looking at it.  I thought it was interesting, though, how only by doing this (cutting open the patient), can you get to see this:

The Fascinating Sweater Guts.  I know - I probably need get out more.  But it is cool no?  See how the inside is a perfect reverse of the outside?  It causes me to pause and reflect on the nature of surgeries, both physical and intellectual.

I am in the process of re-writing my book, which is very like surgery, in that it has a lot of blood and guts, and makes me long for painkillers.  Each word and sentence and turn of phrase has to be taken apart, examined for possible problems, and then stitched back into place.  I want the result to be beauty-enhancing reconstruction.  I deeply fear a Frankenstein outcome. 

I am intellectually balanced on the scalpel's edge between the way I would like to write my writing and the number of pages there are to put it in.  This means that I have to reduce the number of words without changing their meaning.  That's not so hard, but I am finding that the edited version of things always sound like somebody else's writing.  And of course, putting everything under the microscope this way creates a serious loss of perspective, so maybe I'm worrying about nothing?

One of the problems with introspection is it's awfully hard to know when you're done...