Update? We don't need no stinking update.
Novel coming along strong, and am headed into re-writes. (Woke up this morning and started writing in bed. God bless laptops and naked writers.)
Here's a question for all you published novel types out there. I know this varies from publisher to publisher, but what's a "safe" excessive word count for a 90k book? 100? 110?
Despite my best efforts, I'm going to go over, at least a little. The novel will be better for the cutting, but I'll leave that up for the editors to decide.
Hope you all are well, especially the soon-to-be weds. Miss you, love you, H.
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BTW, three decades on this earth and I still make stupid mistakes every day. About every three weeks I look back and think, "Wow, I sure was stupid, way back then ... three weeks ago." So you'd think I be making vast strides towards intelligence, but when you're making up for this much lost ground, it can take a while.
6 comments:
For a contest? I'd consider 1000-2000 words on either side "safe." 3000, tops. Unless they've specified a range, you should probably come in as close to target as possible. If it wasn't a contest, I'd say you could probably go to 95K, as that's about as much wiggle room font and white space will give you without adding pages. More pages means higher production costs. If the contest is close and the editors have to pick the winner by looking for reasons to reject the other manuscripts, missing the specified word count by too much might count against you.
I'd consider 1000-2000 words on either side "safe." 3000, tops. Unless they've specified a range, you should probably come in as close to target as possible.
*whistles* Wow. Thank you for the heads up. There is so much variance in my d20 work, but that is probably due to the artwork.
I've run 10,000 words over on a 23k project, and it came out the same page length as previous works. I mistakenly assumed that with 90k there would a similar or greater amount of leeway, and didn’t even take into consideration that I’m still in contest.
“We’re here to buy a small, sport car.”
“Well, I have this great Cadillac. Doesn’t go fast, but man, the ride is excellent.”
“Well, we really came here because we wanted a sports car.”
“Yeah, but feel these leather seats!” … and so on.
Lesson #8104: Don’t be selling something they aren’t buying.
Again: thank you, EC!
You might also consider emailing the editor to see if he'll give you an upper limit.
Oh, and cut the word "the" out of your manyscript. That should do it right there. ;)
Word verification: lickaa
SO not going there.
(Woke up this morning and started writing in bed. God bless laptops and naked writers.)
Heh, my wife makes fun of me because I'll often turn on the computer first thing in the morning and start writing while still in my underwear.
If I didn't have a day job, I would have precisely three outfits:
1) jogging (with alternate fencing jacket, glove, and mask over them)
2) dash-to-the-store (pants, tivas, T-shirt, raggedy coat)
3) writing (none of the above -- and I do mean *none*)
Cheers
You might also consider emailing the editor to see if he'll give you an upper limit.
Not a bad idea. Who knows--they might have a fairly broad range in mind.
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