Word Count

[Jim]

I've recently completed writing a supernatural suspense thriller. The
length of my work is 162,000 words. As I wrote it over a two-year
period (whew), it did not occur to me that the publishing industry has
established guidelines for the length of specific genre. I discovered
too late that the acceptable length for my type of story is between
100,000 to 120,000 words. That means I'm at least 42,000 words beyond
the limit. Lesson learned: I could have avoided this problem and
numerous other time wasters if I had attended one of the many fine
writer's workshops offered in the area during the early stages of
writing. (This has been an expensive lesson for me).

Here's my question: I would like to keep my story to 120,000 words
rather than 100,000 words. Assuming the quality of my story is
marketable, will a publisher consider a novel of 120,000 words from a
new author. Need you advice. Thank you.

[bze...@aol.com]

>From Bobbie: I always recommend the conventional wisdom of staying
between 50,000 to 100,000 words for a first novel, so 120,000 is
pushing the envelope, but it may be okay if the novel warrants it.
Susan Graham agrees with me. She says that 120,000 is maximum, but it's
better if it's less, especially for first-time authors.

She continues: "What I always tell the author is this: Cut, edit, and
shape the novel until it's in the best shape it can be in, and it
almost always works out to be the right length. If it's still too long,
get some advice on big things that can be cut to make it work, but
sometimes it isn't possible. In fact, I prefer for authors to forget
the word-length issue while editing and focus on making it the best
they can."