by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Right now, my biggest fear with this scifi dramedy novel I’m writing is word count — scene bloat. I’m really nervous that I’ll write a really good novel, but it will just be too long for a first novel.
And, yet, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was about 160,000 words and that got published. So…lulz? It’s not IMPOSSIBLE for a novel that is longer to get published — even for someone as old as fuck like I am.
Right now, I’m just breezing my way through a draft of the novel to so I get some sense of it’s structure on a specific basis. Once I wrap this version up, then I’m going to make another pass through it to make some scenes longer and maybe eliminate some other scenes.
I really don’t want a novel that’s 200,000 words. About 160,000 would be manageable, even though it would still be way too fucking long for a first novel.
But, anyway, I think — think — that I’m getting a little bit of a second wind with this novel. I’m hoping to zoom through the rest of it so I can turn around and re-write or revise large chunks of it before I give it to beta readers to look at.
If I had any money — which I don’t — I would actually pay an manuscript editor to look at the finished product before I started querying it. But that’s just not practical.
As it stands, I’m going to be really, really lucky if I can find *anyone* to read the damn thing before I start to query. Then, even if I stick the landing with the novel, I could be nearly 60 before the thing is in bookshelves so people can read it.
And given the looming technological Singularity….lulz?
