It’s been nearly a year since I got my agent and it’s interesting thinking back to the weeks and months that led up to that fateful day. One thing I did obsessively was scour the net for advice as I put the finishing touches to SHIMMER. I checked agent blogs and articles offering tips. One thing that came through loud and clear was the need for pristine editing.
Get rid of that purple prose!
Edit, edit, edit!
Keep that word count down!
Of course, one of the biggest problems with ‘newbie writing’ (counting myself amongst these!) is that people over-write. But what scares me about all this edit, edit, edit advice is that the passion is being stripped away. Does that make sense?
So word count for example. If you check out writer’s forums such as Absolute Write , you’ll see that writers are a teensy bit obsessed with word count. And I admit, I’m one of ‘em. Is it too long, is it too short? I feel like a teenage boy! Agents will tell you they’re bored of hearing the same old question – what’s the ideal word count for YA / romance / non-fiction etc. But some still provide a guide, usually saying that 50-80k is best for YA. Thing is, if you check out the hot YA picks at the moment, many come in with hefty word counts (I used http://www.perma-bound.com/ as my guide – just search for a book then click on the Reading Information tab and the info usually appears at the top there, sometimes not for newer books). So, for example…
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater comes in at 94,502 words
Going Bovine by Libba Bray at 123,224 words
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins at 101,564 words (and The Hunger Games at 99,750 words)
Of course, there are many examples of wonderful YA novels coming in much shorter (eg. Meg Rosoff stuff usually comes in at around 50k). But what you also notice with these longer books is that stuff that I’d usually cut out (indeed, have been told I ought to by agent blogs) has been kept in. And it’s not like all of them are established writers who can get away with this. Take Maggie Stiefvater, for example, a debut writer. I’m not saying that ‘stuff’ isn’t good, because it is, but it’s not ‘absolutely necessary’ which might go against the ‘only keep in what’s absolutely necessary’ dogma.
With SHIMMER, my first draft (written in 3 and half weeks!) came in at over 90k! I eventually honed it down to under 70k. But with BLISS, my first draft was under 50k. As I said in another post, I obviously learnt a lot about editing during that time. I’m still to see what my agent thinks but it will be interesting… have I gone too far? Have I let the advice take too much of the passion away?
So while others tell you to enjoy going crazy with the red pen, I wonder – are we all going too far? Do we just need to relax the red pen a teensy bit?
Thoughts appreciated!
(Pic credit: by Mr. Wright)




Philip Pullman, author of the fantastic ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy (Lyra? Daemons? Need I say more?) gave a talk for The Open University 40th anniversary lectures on a) the nature of reading, and b) the relationship between the story and its illustration. And guess what? I attended. I’ve interviewed this fantastic writer a few times and always found him to be passionate, fiery, resolute and charming all at the same time and this was exactly how he was when I saw him talk.
Beautiful. That’s how I’d describe this book. Beautifully written, beautiful characterization, beautiful story.

