I don't think I mentioned this yet, but I am hoping to enter the novel I'm working on in a contest. There are only 5,000 entries accepted and the first day to submit is January 24th. The problem is I haven't finished the book yet! So I essentially have exactly two weeks to finish my story if I want to be absolutely sure I can enter this year! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! Sorry, I'm better now.
Back in November when I started writing I figured I would be done with the story by the middle of December. Well, that didn't happen. I think I can do it, but it's going to be close!
And just finishing the story isn't really my only problem here. The other problem is to enter the contest it has to be less the 150K words. My story, if you noticed from my last post, is getting extremely close to that mark, and will be well over it by the time it's done. I think what I'm going to do for the contest is split the book into two books and just submit the first half. I'd rather not go that route, but I don't think I really have a choice in the matter. I do have a good place to split the story, but that does mean the first book in the series would end on kind of a cliffhanger. As a reader that would annoy me, but it would get me to buy the next book, so it might be a good thing as far as a publishing company is concerned, right?
We'll see how this whole thing ends up working out. :) I have no idea if I chance of winning or not, but I at least want to try. Wish me luck!
Word Count 135,440
Plan to get an edit in before the final story sending. When I edited mine I cut several thousand words. You'll come in OK :)
ReplyDeleteAs MBee said, editing definitely cuts down the wordcount, plus it is an absolute must when writing anything you plan on submitting.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with getting it done on time, and the edit afterwards! Even if you don't have time for a full go-through with more than typo and basic grammar checks, you should at least proof-read... and do typo and grammar checks.
I decided to edit the first half and see if that drops my word count to a safe amount. Editing is hard, but luckily my husband used to work as an editor, so he's going to look it over when I'm done with it. Thanks for the advise, being new to writing is really making this tricky! :)
ReplyDeleteIf you want someone to read it to check for plot holes and whatnot, you can send it to me. I can put it on my kindle and I read pretty quickly
ReplyDelete