It is tough, which is why I love MS Word's word counter at the bottom of the screen. Remember the old days when you had to do word counter?
Yeah I've been editing mine for a week getting it under, it's tough cutting your baby. Each word means something. Tell you what - hold on to the extended version so you can post it afterwards, that way we can see it like the Deleted Scenes of the movies. I'll even post it next to the link with the 3000 words after the voting is done.
Not just for you, DS, but for everybody. If you find that your story ran long, keep a version of the long story and after the voting is completed I will post it side by side with your story so we can see whether the extra stuff would have mattered or not like with the movies. I'd be kinda cool. I love watching deleted scenes from movies and saying, "Awww, man. I wish they would have kept that one in," or, "Shit, they were smart to leave that out."
