My writing no is pretty

I've come to realize that a creation must become monstrously ugly before its true beauty can be realized.

This past month I've been working on a prologue scene that will relieve me of all the exposition that's been weighing down my dialogue in one of my chapters. My word count would be over 70,000, but because I've been paring dialogue and narrative, my word count has hovered at 65,000 for about a month. It's like my work was ballooning outward, crammed with ideas, and I had to get in there with a knife to give it shape.

I recently registered for a week-long intensive writing workshop in Chicago this coming July with literary agent Donald Maass. I'm very excited about it since aside from daily instruction, he and his staff will critique the first 50 pages of the manuscript.  I have two months to prepare my manuscript and synopsis before sending it to his agency.