Ouch: first draft of Chapter 3 is ~38,000 words

I just finished working through this text by Roger Williams

Good news and bad news about the book:

The good news is that I finished the first draft of Chapter 3. The bad news is that the first draft is approximately 38,000 words, and it needs to be under 20,000 words.

Here are the sections and their approximate word count:

Martin Luther (4800)
Anna Jansz (2250)
John Calvin (4825)
John Maldonatus (3025)
Shakespeare (4150)
Domenico Fetti (2000)
George Herbert (3600)
Roger Williams (3100)
Rembrandt (3603)
John Bunyan (6420)

I have already eliminated the section on William Tyndale I was planning to include, but I still have a lot of painful cutting to do for the book, especially in this chapter. This is the longest chapter so far, and it has the fewest sections (10). Chapter 1 has 13 sections, and Chapter 2 has 11-12 (John Gower may go completely).

I primarily blame John Bunyan for the wordiness of this chapter (partly kidding).

Chapter 4 is in focus now. I have completed the sections on William Blake and John Everett Millais, and I am currently working on two sections (Fanny Crosby and Leo Tolstoy).  I also have gathered the resources I need to write about Soren Kierkegaard, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Adolf Julicher, Charles Spurgeon, and Amos Bronson Alcott. 

About half of Chapter 5 is written: Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Hart Benton, parables and the Blues, Elsa Tamez, and Octavia Butler. I plan to write sections about the Dalai Lama, David Flusser, and Howard Thurman but have not decided on the remaining sections (perhaps Rilke, probably some art from Africa, and maybe an excerpt from a recent film).

I also have the materials to write a section on some of the parable reception in the hadith. 

Back to work . . . .