The plan was to exchange them today, but he told me in an email response where I was inquiring if we were going to read them together, that if I needed more time that's fine, which makes me think he needs more time.

Yes, it's electronic. I needed to be able to edit and it would take forever doing that by hand. I have no idea how writers edited their stuff before we had computers, but I imagine it was tedious.

When thinking about if I should pare it down, I've come to the conclusion that I've said what I needed and wanted to say and I shouldn't remove things with the sole purpose of making it shorter. It does feel like a novel. In fact, I might have more to say and it may get longer before we're done.