Editing makes my brain rot!

It does, it does --

I have taken the next book, "The Island of Mad Scientists" first draft from 71,000 words down to a shade over 59,000. A chunk of the bits taken out will return, in slightly modified form. That's to get the whole thing to 63-65,000 words, which fits within the publisher's budget for production. Basically, the original is too long not for artistic reasons (hoot! guffaw!) but because it costs too much to have the extra pages. Practical stuff, which I understand.

Still, re-wording sentences to lose a couple of words here and there again and again is hard work. Not ditch-digging hard work, but still ---