Making the Cut

I love writing to the rhythm of a spring rain.  Sitting in my bedroom, the pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof place a spell over my pen.  To the April music, I finished my ghostly short story for Moon Shadows , a +Laurel Highlands Publishing Halloween anthology.
The Hunt clocked roughly a thousand words heavy of the 5,000 word upper limit.  It was time to cull my pretties.
When I write, I fall in love with each and every word.  I choose them carefully.  I string them together with precision.  How can I possibly eliminate one word, let alone whole lines or *gasp* entire scenes?
Brutally.
Although pressing the delete key pains me, sentences shortened.  Mind you, tightening of the story would happen during editing anyway.  However, a few words here and there do not lighten the word load.
I pruned two scenes.  As lovely as they were, they had to go.  The deleted scenes setup for a sequel to the Hunt , but they were not essential to plot advancement.  I will use those scenes as flashbacks in the sequel.
By the end of the Hunt , I slashed well over five hundred words.  It reads like a lean, mean hunting machine.
Shaving a story is more than stabbing in the dark.  Annihilation is deliberate.  Just as there is a rhythm to writing, there is a rhythm to the slaughter called editing.  How will you make the cut?