Well, I've been keeping myself occupied for the last few weeks between working at my job and keeping up with my writing project.
I had completed my second draft a few weeks ago and had been spending the time since going through ruthless edits to try and get my word count down to something that was more acceptable as part of a third draft. That has been met with quite a bit of success, as I've actually managed to get my word count down by 14,000 words, and actually getting a few chapters within their word count targets. However... I do still have a big problem in that even with those unessessary words gone, I'll still have a word count in the 210,000 words territory, which is a little bit too much for a first time writer when it comes to regular publishers.
Alot of people I know have suggested splitting the book into two volumes, but I honestly feel as if that would be a bad mistake, as it would hamper the entire story and would require significant new additions to flesh the two halves out. But I'm becoming increasingly doubtful I can actually cut the word count down further without tearing entire sections out. So I'm between a rock and a hard place on the matter. And it gets worse since I only have myself on hand to proof-read it, as the few people in my family who have looked have repeatedly insisted about publishing it early to the point I've effectively barred them from looking at it, so I don't know who to trust to beta-read it. Eek.