Oh, Shit

I spent my evening hunting around for tips on first-draft editing, and found some stuff – mostly blog posts – that I think will be really helpful. Whereas I’ve been approaching revision with a sense of dread, now I was getting excited about it. So, yay about that.

Then a search engine result caught my eye and I clicked it. It was about standard word counts for various genres of novels. Whether you call what I’m doing urban fantasy or paranormal romance, the standard for both is apparently 90,000-100,000 words. Deviating from the standard can equal automatic rejection for unpublished authors (and I’m assuming I’m considered unpublished because I’ve never published fiction, only journalism).

I’m sitting at 88,000 and am nowhere close to the end.

So now I’m not all that excited about revising anymore. Because chances are good I’m going to be looking to cut around 20,000+ words.

I’m fucked.

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1 Comment

  1. Jackie

    I wouldn’t worry about it as much as you are. Finish the book, make whatever revisions you think are going to make it better, and then start circulating to publishers. If it turns out they all reject it automatically based on the word count, THEN go back and revise again, but why try and force the book to be shorter without first seeing where it goes as is? (Or, I guess, as will be.)

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