I’m psyched to announce that I have officially passed the 100k word mark on Cerulean Bound! Now, don’t start celebrating in the streets yet — I still have at least ten more chapters to write, and a whole ton of other stuff in the first half of the book to fix up and make, well, not awful. But 100k is still a big deal! Woo!
Since my usual first drafts end up being around 120k words, I can expect to tap out at least another 20k before the story reaches its natural conclusion. Then we go into several rounds of editing and dramatic cuts, with the eventual goal of getting the manuscript down to somewhere in the 90k-95k words range. Cutting 25k words sounds a bit drastic, and honestly the idea is freaking me out a little bit, but I’ve managed it twice now so I have faith I can make it happen a third time.
No news on the “finding an agent” front. I’m compiling a list of possible agents to look into, mostly gleaned through this awesome lady on Facebook who posts about new agents looking for clients. My current plan is to focus my efforts on finishing the first draft of Cerulean Bound, then turn my attention to sending out my query letter. If anyone has tips on acquiring an agent, by all means send them my way!
That’s all from me. Have an excellent weekend!
Unrelated media of the day:
Michelle Proulx - Author 
Better too many words than too few at this stage. Slashing more fun than patching.
Very much so! I like to get all the work done up front, then figure out how to scale it back later.
Yay you 😀
It is said that Lincoln, who was pretty lanky, was asked what the length of one’s legs should be. He replied that legs should be as long as they need to be in order to reach the floor. I have the same reaction to word counts: they need to be as high or as low as to tell the story. Having read your books, I know you adhere to the same principle 🙂
That’s the general strategy, yes 🙂 For some reason, I just seem to think in first drafts of 120k words. No matter what I write, it weirdly takes me that many words to get it all down on paper. #twilightzone
Great. Now I have the Twilight Zone theme stuck in my head 😀
Do do do do do do do do
That is so evil!!!!
Isn’t it amazing just how much words one can cut from their original draft? I know I cut out more than 30k by the time I was done with my book.
Agent hunting is tough. I may have to start doing that soon and I’m really, REALLY dreading it. 😦
Good luck!
I have yet to gather the courage to go back and read the original, uncut draft of either of my books. I’m not sure I could handle it, lol.
I did the agent hunting thing back in 2010, to no success. I am absolutely dreading it this time around, which is why I keep putting it off, lol. Thanks for the luck — and good luck to you as well!!!