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Forward to the Future!
Sep. 8th, 2020 10:20 amI just checked the word count on my latest draft of Thoughtless. Despite cutting stuff out and tightening some of the writing, my overall word count went *up* by about 3700. It's now a total of 99,758. Still, a perfectly reasonable amount.
My first novel, Yellow Tape and Coffee, with four POV protagonists, each with their own plot line and cast of side characters, ended up being 212,000 words long. I queried it for several months and kept getting rejected. Several of the agents I follow on Twitter have mentioned how a word count that high on a debut novel is a total deal-killer. I went to a writers conference last February where I met several agents in person and they confirmed that the word count alone would negate any possibility of representation. I looked at ways to reduce it - I could do a bit of re-writing and make it a trilogy or possibly a duology. But that would require taking so much out of the first book that it would lose the complexity that I loved and that I think makes it special. I was starting to make preparations for self-publishing, but then entered a Twitter pitch party, and ended up getting a full manuscript request from a publisher. I sent it in and decided to wait to hear what they said before self-publishing. I'd focus on my second novel while I was waiting. I finished it, and it has the much more respectable under-100k length. I had to cut out a lot of the story to get it there, but that just means I have enough material for a sequel. The original plan really had two parts to it anyway, so halfway through was a good place to cut it.
I haven't heard back from the publisher yet. If I still don't by the time I finish the next draft of Thoughtless, I'm going to start making plans to self-publish Yellow Tape and Coffee, even while I query Thoughtless. Neither of those two activities is actually writing. Although they'll occupy the writing slot in my schedule. I'm going to be squeezing in a new novella during that time, reviving a character I wrote a lot of stories for in high school and in my early 20s and see if I can make something fun and publishable out of it. Novella seems the right length for a Yagmar story, so that's what I'll be going for, even though I have no idea where I can publish such a thing. At this point, it's looking likely it'll be a 99-cent selection in the Kindle store.
After that... who knows. Might write a sequel to Thoughtless, or to Yellow Tape and Coffee. I have several ideas for both and am partway into a first draft the former already. I also have several ideas for novels and for short stories not related to either of these. I might start focusing on a series of short stories starting in January. Possibly even following the "Bradbury Challenge", where you write a short story per week, throughout 2021, and return to novels in 2022. Maybe. If I do that, I'll follow the "Write, polish, submit" plan, with no re-writing except to publisher request.
We shall see. Today, though, is starting the "final" draft of Thoughtless.
My first novel, Yellow Tape and Coffee, with four POV protagonists, each with their own plot line and cast of side characters, ended up being 212,000 words long. I queried it for several months and kept getting rejected. Several of the agents I follow on Twitter have mentioned how a word count that high on a debut novel is a total deal-killer. I went to a writers conference last February where I met several agents in person and they confirmed that the word count alone would negate any possibility of representation. I looked at ways to reduce it - I could do a bit of re-writing and make it a trilogy or possibly a duology. But that would require taking so much out of the first book that it would lose the complexity that I loved and that I think makes it special. I was starting to make preparations for self-publishing, but then entered a Twitter pitch party, and ended up getting a full manuscript request from a publisher. I sent it in and decided to wait to hear what they said before self-publishing. I'd focus on my second novel while I was waiting. I finished it, and it has the much more respectable under-100k length. I had to cut out a lot of the story to get it there, but that just means I have enough material for a sequel. The original plan really had two parts to it anyway, so halfway through was a good place to cut it.
I haven't heard back from the publisher yet. If I still don't by the time I finish the next draft of Thoughtless, I'm going to start making plans to self-publish Yellow Tape and Coffee, even while I query Thoughtless. Neither of those two activities is actually writing. Although they'll occupy the writing slot in my schedule. I'm going to be squeezing in a new novella during that time, reviving a character I wrote a lot of stories for in high school and in my early 20s and see if I can make something fun and publishable out of it. Novella seems the right length for a Yagmar story, so that's what I'll be going for, even though I have no idea where I can publish such a thing. At this point, it's looking likely it'll be a 99-cent selection in the Kindle store.
After that... who knows. Might write a sequel to Thoughtless, or to Yellow Tape and Coffee. I have several ideas for both and am partway into a first draft the former already. I also have several ideas for novels and for short stories not related to either of these. I might start focusing on a series of short stories starting in January. Possibly even following the "Bradbury Challenge", where you write a short story per week, throughout 2021, and return to novels in 2022. Maybe. If I do that, I'll follow the "Write, polish, submit" plan, with no re-writing except to publisher request.
We shall see. Today, though, is starting the "final" draft of Thoughtless.
