Cut off the nose to spite the face?

So, in my effort to expand my word count.... I hacked 700 words out of my manuscript. I know that it will be better for the book, but it hurt. It hurt a lot.

The pieces that I hacked were my hasty and ill-thought attempts at a meta-plot. Yes, the series will have one, but the more I thought about it, the more I decided that it shouldn't be introduced in the first book. The plot for this first book is already nice and tight, and I'm happy with it. The fact that adding this meta-plot thing brought me to a screeching halt proved that it wasn't the right thing to do. (it has, however, given me some good notes and plot ideas for the second book)

I'm panicking over the word count thing still, despite my promises to myself that I'd finish the revisions before going all freaky. Ah well. Even if it's short, it's going to beta readers when I'm done with this round of revisions. I'm hoping that they can point out other places where I can expand without making it merely gratuitous padding of words.