ISBW #25 - Editing Process
- StellarCon was a blast where I saw Mike Stackpole, Tee Morris and Patrick McLean.
- I finished the hard copy edit of my novel!
- Rejection this week from Escape Pod.
- Tee Morris saved my signing!
- Editing process of a novel. Or my novel, anyway.
- Miss Snark’s blog
- Pam McCutcheon’s word count comments
- Don’t forget the short story contest!
- Music by Dr. Kuch from Magnatune.com
Write.
About the Author: I am a writer and podcast producer, writing for magazines and RPGs. I am a wanna-be fiction writer with several short fiction, comic scripts, and one novel sale. Playing For Keeps will be out August, '08.
Jenna | Feb 21, 2006 | Reply
Hi Mur!
It was good to see you at StellarCon! I loved the show today. I can’t answer your question about word count, but I’m definitely interested in seeing if anyone else can post it.
Keep up the good work on the editing process.
ttfn–Jenna
Mur Lafferty | Feb 21, 2006 | Reply
Thanks Jenna, and it was excellent to get back in touch with you again after too long! Thanks for listening.
Eugene | Feb 22, 2006 | Reply
Hey Mur,
Re: word count, that is definitely true for submitting short fiction manuscripts (is that how you’ve been doing it?). Another method is to count the # of characters per line, divide by six, multiply that by the # of lines per page, and finally multiply that by the # of pages; this would probably result in either more or less than the 250 x # of pages method, depending.
I wasn’t sure if this applies to novel manuscript submissions as well, but I just consulted The Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Science Fiction, and Doctorow/Schroeder confirmed that you should use this method to come up with a word count there as well. I imagine this makes it tricky to see how you’re doing as you’re writing unless you’re doing it in manuscript format already.
I honestly wouldn’t worry about it *too* much. I think your work will stand on its own and if they like what they see they won’t be swayed if it’s a little long (or short) of the ideal length. That’s what editors are for, right?
Chris | Feb 22, 2006 | Reply
Yeah, what Eugene said. This calculation was in a doc I’ve always used for manuscript preparation by William Shunn at http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html, although his latest revision just says estimate the words per page and multiply.
Christiana | Feb 23, 2006 | Reply
That 250 words per page is what I had heard as well. Nina Kimberly the Merciless is ~104K by exact word count, but ~125K by the 250 words per page type.
As for whether they consider length or not, YA publishers absolutely do. I had not intended Nina Kimberly to be YA, but (long story) it ended up on the desk of Jonathan Schmidt, the YA editor at Tor.
He told me that it was twice as long as they would even consider for a first-time novelist. Of course, that is for YA books, which, with some notable exceptions of course, run shorter.
That was a tough one, because if he had said cut it by 20%, I probably could have done that. It would have been painful, but it could be done. But half? The only way would have been to actually split it into two parts, but I don’t want to do that, because it’s really only one story. Splitting it would interrupt the arc.
Oh well, guess that’s why I’m seeking alternatives, eh? ^_^
Kiki | Feb 24, 2006 | Reply
Hey Mur. Loved the show, as always. good on you for finishing your hard copy edit!
Just a quick note. you’re right to say that reading on a monitor is harder than on paper. Even the best monitors still have a refresh rate that’s slower than the human eye. The flicker causes our attention to waver and the eye to jump. Skim-reading on a screen results in less information being absorbed. So it’s always advisable to line-edit and close edit on hard copy. If you change your printing to double-sided ARC format (similar to what book binders use in a way), you get four pages per sheet of paper, cutting down on your volume. plus you get a feel what the book would look like printed (page layout etc).
Re: word count: Yes, I’d take it seriously. Adding 50 pages to a book is no small feat, and if the publisher has a set lot they do page-wise, your going over and expecting them to buy your MS is unprofessional and rude, I’d say.
They make their guidelines for a reason, so we should try our best to adhere by them.
You can make your own “perfect page” by using a non-proportional font (which for all intents and purposes means Courier or Courier New) in 12pt font with 3 cm margins all around. That should get you very close to 25 lines of 25 words on average.
Having said that, I don’t think you need to worry about your novel being too long. you said yourself you’re still in an early editing round, so once you’ve added everything you want to say (that’s when the novel is really ready for some hardcore editing), you’ll be able to cut out 10%. You always can. Take out every descriptor tag you use to describe the way someone says or does something. nothing else. In a 100k novel, if it’s only 100 words, I’d be immensely surprised.
Everybody writes extranous clever phrases and repetitions. tighten it up, and your writing will read that much better.
And finally, don’t take romance writers’ guidelines too seriously. they work in the most rigid field of fiction writing, and they have absorbed a lot of bitterness and harsh attitude towards rules.
Anonymous | Feb 25, 2006 | Reply
Great show. I just wanted to add a little advice on keeping different file versions of the writer’s work. If you’re on an Apple Mac, there’s an awesome little program called CopyWrite by Bartas Technologies that is designed for the writer, and has an impressive file-versioning feature (among many others that make it a joy to write with).
Hope this helps.
A fellow writer,
RR