I’ve been slowly losing words. Right now I’m about 10,000 down from what I call version 1.5. In the process I’ve removed five chapters completely. I still need to lose 23,000 words from what’s left to hit my goal of 120,000 words. Getting down to 115,000 would be ideal, but getting rid of 33,000 words is hard enough as it is.
Why do I need to get rid of so many words? This is a case of pragmatism. From my research it seems like 120,000 words is about as big a book as agents and publishers will consider for a first time author. If it gets bigger than that, then the odds increase that it won’t even be looked at.
When I started the book, I didn’t know a lot, I just wrote and the Fantasy books on my shelf tended to be longer than 120k–some much longer–so it never occurred to me that my book would be too long. It’s been a bit depressing at times trying to figure out how I can cut it down that much, but my rough draft was 178k so I’m closing in. Getting another 23k out is a lot less daunting than 58k.
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