I usually jot my thoughts quickly as a first phase, then do a second phase in which I trim it to almost half the size. I've heard that many people do that as well. On the second phase, we tend to notice the redundency and things that are not that important to mention.
You obviously did a good amount of research for this paper, apparanet by the number of references. My comment on it, though, is that it jumped from subject to subject and tried to cover too many questions. I find it easier to read essays that focus on one single point and dive deeply into it.
