Pruning completion

I've continued pruning this week. This will be my last pruning post. I've finished pruning. The past six days, I pruned 91, 151, 122, 66, 88, and 45 words, working by pen/paper and computer in morning for 2-3 hours and at night by pen/paper for around an hour. Part 3 of my novel is now 1030 words shorter than in the second draft. It went from 29,957 to 28,927 words. It took eight days to go through it twice. I pruned an average of 125.375 words per day. After I go through part 4—there are some things I want to transplant there from the other parts—the third draft will be done. I think the cover is being made now by my publisher. We reconsidered the title for a few days and decided to keep Leave Society. I'm looking forward to posting unused material that isn't pruned material in future posts in this weekly series. Here is what I pruned from Tuesday-Sunday (besides prunings of one or two words, which I didn't save):

-The other movements were fast. 

-Using pigments made from azurite, limonite, soot, woad, weld, and other minerals and plants

-had also been rectangular, one-roomed, and kitchened 

-the worst-seeming place for careful contemplation 

-seemingly life-long 

-Daodejing, 3422; The Bible, 13,220

-Li said there used to be more birds everywhere, that the title of the book Silent Spring referred to the eerie silence in many places due to pesticides inadvertently killing many birds. 

-He wanted to elaborate, but sensed he would seem and feel unreasonable. 

-Kay said at a book event the previous night in a group of people she’d said she’d been rolling cigarettes with organic tobacco, and there’d been no response. She’d felt like she had a secret. Li said he felt that way when researching nature and society. 

-or be able to live without a caretaker 

-The sharing brought them closer to one another. 

-corruption whistleblowers 

-send photos of food, or 

-and so he felt safe 

-and that he wanted to be weirder, so that when he encountered compelling yet obscure information, he’d feel encouraged to explore instead of ignore or suppress 

-and triggered health problems 

-They were on the platform where he’d escalated away from and immediately back to his parents the previous day. 

-Li flapped and deepbreathed while facing the waterfall. 

-“I have papers coming out that will be read in a hundred years." 

-Li said his nonfiction book referenced thirty papers. 

-That night, drawing in his room, Li listened to his dad talk on the phone to one of his employees. After a long silence, Li’s dad started talking again, repeating a question. Li’s mom, in the kitchen, interrupted him, saying she’d thought he’d been talking to his employee. “No,” said Li’s dad, and repeated the question. Li left his room smiling and saw his mom’s annoyed face. Seeing his smile, she smiled. 

-time, space, imagination 

-It still doesn’t feel right. 

-“There wasn’t any ‘will not’ when you left?” said Li. 

-“Maybe some people said it, but you didn’t know them,” said Li. 

-who’d lived until he was eighteen 

-like picking up blood test results 

-instead of trying to use it against her 

-wearing earphones at his desk 

-because he’d wanted to be near his dad. 

-At Whole Foods, Li realized Mike had a seemingly unique facial expression in which he flattened his cheeks in a kind of metaexpression, over which he could layer smiles, smirks, frowns. 

-He says when you view it like this, it can help you calm down, and do something. 

-except birthday and Christmas gifts 

-as he’d started doing in emails lately 

-leading from roof to height-staggered roof 

-or lipstick