snip snipety snip

I'm on the 2nd round of cutting my novel now, which goes sometimes slowly and sometimes fast. Fast is when you can take out a chunk, as yesterday when I cut out a whole chapter--around 3000 words--chunk, into the virtual wastebasket, otherwise known as another file, because I can't bear to throw it away completely, or at least not yet. Very satisfying.
Slow is when I pick away as if the novel is an iceberg, frozen hard and impervious, and I attack it feebly, the tiniest chips of words and phrases being winkled out, melting as they fly through the air.
It amazes me sometimes how wordy I've been. Sometimes I can see my writing self making my way through the narrative as if it were a trackless jungle, the line of writing my only hope of seeing the other side. I can see the phrases and sentences I wrote while I was marking time, thinking on the page: what will Carl do next? what will he think when Isabel pinches him? who will he meet at the auction.
And I can see the places where I was thinking myself into the scene word by unnecessary word: he got up, he was standing, then he put his hand out to take the Snickers bar--all the gestures that in a movie might be beautifully meaningful and necessary, but that need to be pared away on the page so that the significant gesture, movement, expression stands out and is remembered.