To the dead it don't matter much 'bout whose wrong or right.

[lenora_rose]

Editing is going... weird. I feel like I'm hacking and slashing chunks out. I went over the chapters I'd already hacked pieces out of once and each one lost yet more words, which i hadn't thought I'd be able to manage. Granted, very few in some places, but a couple of chunks much bigger than I'd anticipated. And I've gone through a lot of the not-previously edited bits, and they lost much higher word counts, and more large segments.

However, I'm still at 135k. And I have only 30K left to edit.

That is to say, I'd have to trim HALF of what's coming up to make my goal. The next scenes are probably the most rough-written, and therefore not only will likely lose the most words, but will also require other kinds of polishing. (If the chapter I just finished is anything to go by.) Regardless.

This book is not going to be 120k.

*I'm* okay with it being 130k. But it sounds so much like agents aren't, overall.

To which: FUCK.

I suppose I could send out a call for critique with an eye to cutting words in particular. (it rarely hurts to have a beta of some kind). But, for various reasons, I've been feeling leery about tacking on yet another half year at least of waiting on responses and yet another run of editing of who-knows-how-long; this time, it feels like the fruits resulting of such a delay would not be different enough from the fruit already borne to affect how any agent would react to this project.

Time is what I haven't got, or at least that's how it feels.

Tell me if I'm being an idiot.

Comments

[jeffheikkinen.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't go so far as saying you're being an idiot, but you did say both that agents would take it seriously at 120k but not 130k, *and* that they wouldn't care about the difference. On the face of it these can't both be correct, so decide which it is (no doubt, a process greatly complicated by variation between agents, so you're looking for the overall trend here) and that's also, effectively, your decision on whether it's worth the extra time.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

It's a grey area, really. 130K is long enough to cause some agents to do a form rejection without even looking at the work, and short enough for others to consider it still worth looking at the rest of the package, though they may consider it a strike against. I can probably, with minimal research, name names on both sides of that line. But the trend is getting to shorter. That "maybe, maybe not" number might have been as high as 150K as little as five years ago, and definitely was at least that high ten years ago.

However, what i should have said was, Other than any possible reduction in length, I cannot see a critique leading to revisions that would change an agent's mind. Remove that one factor, and it's as close at it gets.


On another matter, I really should call you sometime.