Progress of a sort
Nov. 19th, 2011 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anthimeriaI've been deleting, rewriting, and writing new scenes for this latest draft of Skywatch, and unfortunately my mass-delete (which brought me from dvii's 54k words to dviii's beginning stat of 47k words) did not provide a quite adequate enough cushion: I'm back up over 50k. Over 51k, actually.
One of the goals for dix may have to be re-reading and cutting. I'd really rather have a query letter for a MG novel with a word count that's in the 40k instead of 50k range, just psychologically. It doesn't even matter if it's 49k, so long as it has that all-important 4 as the first number. It's very much like pricing: people think something's cheaper if it's $4.99 than if it's $5.00, even if they're only a single cent apart.
Again, drastically different from how I felt when I was initially writing and revising. I think I just hadn't done enough research--and wasn't sure enough about Skywatch's target age group--and thought 50k as a goal would be playing it safe. I think it's still a not unreasonable length for a middlegrade novel that edges into upper-middlegrade territory, but still. I don't want my word count to put an agent off entirely. I can trim, I swear! Especially with help!
Probably I'll have to prove that in the revision process. New goal: once all the writing-style work for this draft is finished, tackle cutting. Just enough to get it under 50k again.
All bitching about my wordcount aside, I did add a fantastic new scene that I didn't even plan before hand. It was an instance where my notes said I needed Eshe to get a glimpse of the antagonist to up the tension, and then suddenly I kept writing and she was following and there was an extra thousand-word scene of awesome where I hadn't planned to put one. Nevertheless, scene of awesome tops nit-picky wordcount goals, so I didn't stop myself from writing it. And I am very glad I did it.
Just, y'know. I'm a little neurotic about wordcount, it's how I gauge my writing. Besides, if I get to not be teased about wordcount obsession any month of the year, November is it. Good luck to anyone tackling NaNoWriMo!
One of the goals for dix may have to be re-reading and cutting. I'd really rather have a query letter for a MG novel with a word count that's in the 40k instead of 50k range, just psychologically. It doesn't even matter if it's 49k, so long as it has that all-important 4 as the first number. It's very much like pricing: people think something's cheaper if it's $4.99 than if it's $5.00, even if they're only a single cent apart.
Again, drastically different from how I felt when I was initially writing and revising. I think I just hadn't done enough research--and wasn't sure enough about Skywatch's target age group--and thought 50k as a goal would be playing it safe. I think it's still a not unreasonable length for a middlegrade novel that edges into upper-middlegrade territory, but still. I don't want my word count to put an agent off entirely. I can trim, I swear! Especially with help!
Probably I'll have to prove that in the revision process. New goal: once all the writing-style work for this draft is finished, tackle cutting. Just enough to get it under 50k again.
All bitching about my wordcount aside, I did add a fantastic new scene that I didn't even plan before hand. It was an instance where my notes said I needed Eshe to get a glimpse of the antagonist to up the tension, and then suddenly I kept writing and she was following and there was an extra thousand-word scene of awesome where I hadn't planned to put one. Nevertheless, scene of awesome tops nit-picky wordcount goals, so I didn't stop myself from writing it. And I am very glad I did it.
Just, y'know. I'm a little neurotic about wordcount, it's how I gauge my writing. Besides, if I get to not be teased about wordcount obsession any month of the year, November is it. Good luck to anyone tackling NaNoWriMo!