Where’ve I been, you ask?<\/p>\n
Why, working! And editing my novel :-)<\/p>\n
Plowed through a good 150 pages today, starting to get tired, so thought I’d take a quick break now to blog about . . . novel length.<\/p>\n
My WIP is now at 65,000 words, and I’m betting it will finish at 67-68K.<\/p>\n
The count has been creeping up during this latest round of editing, as I add some scenes and flesh out a subplot that I’d set aside while I worked on the main plot. Still, it’s on the thin side, so naturally I sat up and paid attention when I read this, in a post titled “Too Short” over at agent Kristin Nelson’s blog<\/a>, Pubrants.<\/p>\n My agent friends and I just recently discussed an interesting trend on our chat loop: queries for novels with really short word counts (like 50,000 or 60,000 words) that aren’t category romance, cozy mysteries, or YA.<\/p>\n Queries for “full-length” novels.<\/p>\n In fact, according to one agent friend, she says that about half the queries she receives highlights this short word length.<\/p>\n We are all stymied by this.<\/p>\n Where are writers getting the info that this might be an appropriate length for a work? That it would be a marketable length? Standard word length is usually between 70,000 to 100,000 words for a novel. Fantasy can push up to 110,000 but for a debut, it’s going to be a tough go if the word count is higher.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n About the same time the issue of manuscript length came up on Deanna Carlyle’s Chicklit Yahoo forum. The discussion offered a new twist: using a computer word count (i.e. MS Word’s utility) gives a shorter length than calculating word count the old-fashioned way — i.e., use Courier 12 pt text, then multiply your page count by 250 — Courier 12 pt gives you an average of 250 words\/page.<\/p>\n So a couple days ago, just for fun, I reformatted my WIP from the default font — Times Roman 12 pt — to Courier 12 pt. It jumped from 265 pages to 340.<\/p>\n Is that the secret to legitimately “padding” your official MS length?<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the answer is “probably not.” I actually had a chance to put this question to Kristin Nelson herself, since she’s the guest this week on TWLAuthorTalks<\/a> (still time to click and join if you want to ask her a question yourself!)<\/p>\n Kristin said that agents and editors use MS word count — and that although published authors can get away with shorter books, first-time novelists are going to have a hard time selling anything that falls outside that 70-100,000-word rule (excluding the genres she noted in her blog post).<\/p>\n She does give a ray of hope for those writers whose work is coming up too long–or too short. If your novel is good enough, word count won’t matter as much.<\/p>\n If your novel is good enough.<\/p>\n I’m not worried about my WIP btw. Partly because I’m totally enamored of it, right now — flaws? What flaws? lol<\/p>\n But mostly because I made a conscious decision, with this book, not to worry about length. I’m focusing on the plot and the characters. I do tend to write rather spare prose, and frankly I don’t want to cure that. I want this book to move, and I want its bones to show.<\/p>\n One day I’ll know whether I can sell it, at whatever length it comes out to be, but until then, it’s just not a problem I’m going to let climb into the boat ;-)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where’ve I been, you ask? Why, working! And editing my novel :-) Plowed through a good 150 pages today, starting to get tired, so thought I’d take a quick break now to blog about . . . novel length. My … Continue reading