Work in Progress Wednesday #002

Welcome to the second addition of Work in Progress Wednesday, which appropriately enough, is a work in progress itself.

If anyone else out there in the blogosphere wants to join in on the fun, simply post your own WIP Wednesday entry on your blog and leave a link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a blog, feel free to report your progress directly into the comments box.

For more detailed information concerning what all this nonsense is about please consult the original Work in Progress Wednesday posting.


So, once again I'm going to kick my own post off with thee ye olde word count meter.

82407 / 85000 words. 97% done!

That's right, I am 6% closer to finishing my WIP this week than I was last week! It's awesome, it's great, it's... not one hundred percent accurate.

You see, in an ironic twist worthy of an Alanis Morisette song I have been endlessly worrying since somewhere around the 50K mark that my book will not be long enough, and now it seems like it might end up being longer than my estimated 85K.

Waaayyy back in July when I first began writing this thing I was aiming for a final work count of 100K, but after I got several chapters in I realized that I had these kind of short little chapters in the 2500-4000 range. So I did a rough chapter by chapter outline and then pulled up the trusty calculator function. Here is my extremely skillful use of mathmatics (try not to be intimidated):

(# of chapters) multiplied by (estimated # of pages per chapter) = *smack head on desk repeatedly*

Yeah, it wasn't quite the 100K I had envisioned. No big though. I regrouped, researched, and realized that Urban Fantasy's should be more in the 85K arena anyway. So, things were back on track until, like I said earlier at the 50K range I started to worry that the story might finish before I got into the 80's.

At this point I did what I do best. I worried. I fretted. I stressed as if stressing was an Olympic sport and I was going for the gold (I would totally win it too, just ask my husband and he will roll his eyes in confirmation).


Then I did the other thing I do. I went on the internet seeking answers. I found an entry on The Swivet Blog concerning word count lengths for different genres. For Urban Fantasy it listed 80-90K as the range to be in. This posting became a sort of security blanket for me, whenever I was feeling uneasy about my word count I'd pull it up, look at those numbers, and give myself a little pep talk that went like this:

"Okay self, you can get to 80K. I know, I know. But what if you can't? If you can't that's okay too. You already know that there are holes in the beginning that you'll have to go back and spackle the hell out of. Once you take care of that it'll punch your word count up where you need it. Oh and self? The whining?So not attractive."

When this didn't work, I consulted another agent blog posting about word count - this one over at Pub Rants. This one specifically addresses the problem with novels that are too short and states that a full length novel is usually 70-100K words.

Now I am sure at this point you are reading this long winded blog post and thinking, "Really you were worried about having enough words? Because, honestly, that does not seem like that much of a problem for you."

And if you were thinking this then you are right.

By the end of this week I will almost certainly reach my goal of writing 85K words, but I don't think I will at that point be writing "the end" - that is not unless I want a book with a very very very abrupt cliffhanger ending, along the lines of:

"And then I... THE END."

Maybe I am wrong though, if nothing else this post has confirmed that estimating word counts is a very tricky business indeed. I guess I will just have to see what happens and update you during next weeks WIP Wednesday whether I reached the true ending or not. (See, now that's a cliffhanger ending, even I'm dying to find out what happens.)

What about you? Anyone else counting words like a crazy person, or are you somewhere else in your WIP?

Raise Your Glass Friday

Having seen other blogs that have certain topics or subjects that they feature weekly (such as my favorite Top Chef blog's Monday pictures that pay tribute and poke fun at host Padma Lakshmi) I have decided to try one of my own. Thus "Raise Your Glass Friday" - inspired by the fact that my husband usually comes home on Friday evenings after work with either a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer to kick off the weekend - begins here where I simply recognize something or someone that has helped me on my writer's journey to publication thus far.

Today I am raising my glass and toasting - Agents Who Blog.

Now obviously I am not the first person to recognize the awesome resource this has become for not just beginning writers, but to anyone with a writing career. In Writer's Digest most recent list of 101 Best Websites they have a whole category devoted to agent's blogs and The Guide to Literary Agents Editor's Blog has a rather comprehensive list the left side of their page.

Instead of repeating what you could find elsewhere I am simply going to highlight the blogs that I visit daily and/or specific posts that I have found especially enlightening.

Bookends Blog

I already mentioned this blog and one of the contests that is has run in my first blog posting, but I have to mention it again since it is quite honestly the first blog that I visit each morning, and the reason for this is that Mon-Fri there is always some sort of fresh content posted there. If you haven't already I highly recommend bookmarking it and adding it to your daily reading, however don't stop there - because there is a ton of awesome information also buried in the archives. Most helpful to me were the multiple postings concerning query and pitch critiques. I read all ten rounds of the query pitches and all twenty-five rounds of the pitch critiques like the slightly obsessive compulsive person that I am (although when I tell my husband I think I have a touch of the OCD he tells me that I am not clean enough - and just to be clear that is a dig at my housecleaning skills - not my personal hygiene). As I read through I would click back to the word document that had the beginnings of my second attempt at a query letter and re-work it and then re-work it again, bouncing my ideas off of what Jessica thought both did and did not work in the various entries. And in the end I think I had a more successful query letter because of it.

Miss Snark

I don't think this blog needs an introduction. It was the very first literary agent blog I came across because you can't google "literary agent" without getting a tons of hits that somehow come back to Miss Snark. Although the blog is retired the archives live on and days - no weeks can be lost combing through them all. However, what I found the most helpful was the her synopsis critiques. No sooner had I finally cleared the horrible query hurtle when the even more impossible task of writing a synopsis loomed before me. My inability to write a synopsis dates all the way back to grade school when I had to it as part of book reports - I simply have no ability to distinguish important and unimportant details. Disgusted with my synopsis that read much like how a five year-old child might recount an especially exciting day (and then we went to the park, and then it was really hot so we had ice-cream, and then it dripped on my shoes, and then... you get the idea) I began to search the internet for some examples, and come across Miss Snark's Synopsis-Crapometer. I laughed, I cried, and I read until my eyes bled. And when it was all over... okay, well to be honest I am still not going to win any prizes for synopsis writing, but if for some reason my life depended on writing one (Mark Burnett is actually already developing the reality show) - I would live to see another day. Thank you Miss Snark.

Nathan Bransford and Kristin Nelson

Like the Bookends blog new content here is fairly consistent and always informative. What is especially nice about these two blogs are that Mr. Bransford and Miss Nelson have been kind enough to have lovely little links in the sidebar to some of their most essential and helpful posts. The Nathan Bransford blog also has the occasional contest - past ones include best title, best first line, best paragraph, best first page, and most recently best dialogue. (Whooo that was a lot of linking.)

Honorable Mentions

The rest of the blogs that I frequent I don't have any specific stories to tell about them, but they are informative and maybe they will have something that is specifically helpful to you - so check them out!

Janet Reid
Query Shark (also a Janet Reid Production)
Lyons Literary
The Swivet
Et in Arcaedia, ego

Okay, toasting is over - let's drink!