Manuscript Lengths

Sometimes the story you want to write doesn’t have enough steam to be a full length novel.  So what is it?  Is it a “short novel” or a novella?  How do you know?  I don’t have all the answers, but here’s what I’m finding.

As a rule of thumb, things from 5,000 to 20,000 can be considered a ‘short story’.  The 20,000 kind of baffles me, because that’s not all that short.  I would think that the ceiling would be around 10,000 or even 15,000.  The rule though seems to fluctuate depending on the publisher.  Some don’t accept stories under a certain length.

Novellas are the middle beast.  They can be from 20,000 to 40,000.  I’ve seen a few publishers that will call something up to 50,000 words a novella.  For me this is where a lot of the confusion sits.  In traditional publishing it seems that they want a more mid-range number, along 35,000 words.  However, epub markets will accept a wide variety of these mid-lengths so long as the story is good.

The animal most people are familiar with are novels.  Those numbers don’t scare me.  Depending on the market, novels can be 50,000 all the way up to around 100,000.  I think that for majority of genre novels, Coleen Lindsey is a great resource for identifying wordcounts.  She actually just updated her suggested lengths.  Some of them are lower, down to 25,000 or 40,000 but they’re specific markets.

So right now I must work on my story, and then edit it and figure out where it fits.

Writing on Location

This isn’t my first marathon hospital stay.  It’s also not the first time that I’ve written while hoping to hear good news.  The first time this happened I think was during National Novel Writing Month.  I recall having to write five thousand words a day, curling up in my NaNoWriMo hoodie on the floor of the ICU waiting room in the early morning hours so I would be there in case anything happened.

I don’t know how or why I can write at a hospital, I just can.  It’s something I’ve been doing since I started seriously writing every time a family member has been in the hospital.  My dad and his stroke.  My mom and her heat stroke.  My dad and his foot.  Now, my grandmother and her stroke.

This time around hasn’t been different.  I learned however that I do have some limits.  I can’t edit under these circumstances.  Maybe it’s the having to think things through that takes too much out of me, but editing hasn’t happened this week, which is disappointing.  I had wanted to finish this pass and be ready for an editing class I’m taking next week, but life happens.

What I have done is start a new idea that I’m hoping will be a novella.  It’s one I’ve been wanting to write but haven’t made time for.  It’s a small thing to be glad for, but right now with all the life things going on, you appreciate what good things do happen.

ROW 80 Check In

I’m going t do a proper check in this week.  I’ve been blogging less so I might as well do the proper check in, right?  No excuses!

Okay, this last week was the kick off of the Savvy Author’s Boot Camp, which translates to uber focused writing and editing time.  I’ll talk more about it tomorrow when I do my big weekly check in.

ROW 80 Goals…

1. Finish Casual Love

Done, and done, and done! I need to write a new beginning for it but I’m not ready for that. I’m still exhausted from just writing it.  I’m kind of hoping that the last week of May I will have the three stories I have slated to write for the boot camp done and I can churne out a new beginning then, but in the meantime I should probably read over the book so I get a better handle on what exactly it is I need to establish in the beginning of the book.  This is more on the revising of this book, but oh well.

2. Finish at least two short stories.

These are more like novellas.  The first one I wrote, Rescue Me, is out making the critique rounds.  I told the group origionally two weeks and realized that with the boot camp I should wait until June, so in a monthish I’ll circle back to this and work on it again.  I have a general plan for the siblings of the sister introduced in this story in case I can write the whole family.

Decoy is what I’ve been working on in the last week.  It’s pretty awesome.  I’ll talk more about it tomorrow.

3. Do writerly things every day.

This last week was a return to the dedicated mentality of doing things every day.  Yeah, I felt guilty for the two weeks I was laying around reading all the time but I needed that.  It was writerly in that I needed my ‘word tank’ refilled.  It wasn’t obviously writing or revising or whatever time, but it’s still an important part of being a writer.  And I’m okay with that.  This last week though has seen me at the computer until all hours of the night getting in those words and pages!

4. Juggle revisions and writing.

The boot camp has made this really happen.  I revise during the day at lunch or before work, and then write and blog at night.  It’s really working out well.  The revision project this last week was a fantasy book I wrote last year called Maliginus.  I’ve been writing on Decoy.  Last night I did a quick pass through a short story I wrote during NaNo called Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers.  Sometimes I really surprise myself with my writing.  All things are awesome!

Writing Update

It’s Monday! Already? Lordy, where has the time gone?  Well, if it’s Monday then it means it’s time for me to check in and account for what I’ve been doing.  Accountability is a big motivator for me – that and the competition factor with my other #writersdatenight girls.  If I don’t have something to show for my week, I feel shame!  But no shame for me over this last week.  Oh my goodness, I have done a LOT!

Blogging.

I have topical posts scheduled through, are you ready for this? MARCH! YES! March! I’m not announcing what I’ll be blogging about next month, but I’m happy with the posts.  There will be fewer topical posts, but I’m okay with that.  February has been a lot of work to get going, and I feel like instead of having a nice, targeted shot with each post – I’ve been firing buckshot and just hoping to hit the target.  March will be better.  Besides that, I have a new blogging feature I’ll be talking about later this week, I believe… Unless I change my mind and push it out, which is a possibility.

Revising.

This needs to be handled, like, someone give me a timer and Make. Me. Do. It. I’ve started the terrible process of himhawing around and wondering if I should just shelve the project because ‘Maybe it’s not really that good’ or ‘Revising is such a hassle. I’d rather write!’ or any number of other very invalid excuses for Not Revising.  I finished the read through of the zero draft on Sunday, and I’m working on my big revision notes of the stuff that really needs to be fixed.  In a day or two I want to start tackling this.  I would like to get halfway through this draft by the end of the month, which roughly means 10 – 15 pages of edits a day.

Writing.

This was a huge success this week, like phenomenal.  It felt so good to just sit down and do tons of writing in one sitting.  I haven’t really done this since November/December and I’ve missed that feel that something is just pouring out of you and you have to struggle to catch it all because every bit only comes out once and there’s no second chances.

Project: Formerly Fat Club: prequel novella, yet unnamed
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Type: Novella
Progress: This is a novella that I’m writing for a currently seekrit project.  The project was so seekrit that I forgot about it and realized this last week that I needed something to contribute.  Because I’ve been working on my contemporary romance, I came up with the idea of exploring the main character of the first novel’s sister.  She’s not technically part of the Formerly Fat Club, but I do talk about how it effected her life growing up with her sister and her sister’s problems.  It’s a sweet romance, which means the culmination of the romance is a kiss, but the characters were a lot of fun to write and the story just jumped onto the page.  I finished the 20K novella in three days.  I loved it!  I also learned more about the main character of Casual Love by writing about her sister and their deceased grandparents.

Project: Formerly Fat Club: Casual Love
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Type: Novel
Progress: I am currently working through the material I had written before, changing the story from first person to third.  It’s time consuming and doesn’t put many words on the page, but when it’s all said and done I’ll be much farther along in the story than I was.  What’s really fun is that I’ve come up with ideas for the following books featuring each of the Formerly Fat Club ladies, and an idea for a spin-off novella.  I’m getting a lot of encouragement about this project from my friends so I really think I am going to see this project through to the end this time!  I sat down on Sunday and wrote out the plot for the rest of the book and I’m excited and nervous about it.  I’m writing up a synopsis to send to my other writer friends to read over and give me feedback on, so hopefully I’ll be writing lots on this in the near future.  I’m going to be writing up the other character profiles soon too!

Project: Reti Guild
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Type: Novel
Progress: I feel terrible because I’ve skipped writing on this all week to work on the novella, but I did a lot more research and started working on how the religions all mesh.  This weekend I’ve been focusing on getting to know my antagonist, I feel like I shouldn’t write much more until I figure him out.  Granted, he doesn’t really show up for most of the novel, but knowing him and his motivations will help out writing.

All in all, I’m very excited about the way this week has gone.  Now to tackle this next week!!!!

More on BB and revisions and stuff!

As I sit here typing this, my brain numb, I’ve just rewritten the ending for my novella – Blood Bound – AGAIN. However, I like this one best I think. I scrambled last night to get the whole thing under word count, and in it’s current incarnation it is, but tonight I will do another read through and see what I have left and what needs to be fine tuned just a bit more before I go off and let yet another person read it. I’m no longer bleeding optimism about the fate of my book, but neither am I bemoaning how awful it must be. I’ve settled somewhere in the middle. I like the characters and the story. I want to write what happens next – because I’m still not quite sure what happens!

I think this is the story of the new Earth finally emerging from it’s cocoon and moving forward – but to do that it needs a new kind of guardian. I’m working over it in my head, but I’m sure the rest will come to me later!

So for now, I’m happy that Blood Bound is one step closer to being done.