Question Maggie: What's "too" long?? I've considered what it would
take for good character development in the one I'm on now, and it
could easily top 325,000 words. That's a "ton" of words for a novel,
but the storyline warrants the time and effort involved.
Some novels require more length for exactly the reasons you mention. I'm not suggesting that a writer should limit the length arbitrarily. But my writing at least can use tightening up, getting rid of some bits of dialogue and description. There are passages in the early parts of the book that I thought might be needed that now seem superfluous in the context of the book as a whole. I will keep a copy of the unabridged version too, but I am confident that it will be a better novel for judicious editing.
There's an excellent book called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King that has taught me a lot about how and why to revise and how to make a manuscript more professional.
Mark Twain-----self-pubbed. Walt Whitman-----self-pubbed.
Ernest Hemingway-----self-pubbed. A modern-day author got
over 200+ rejections for her book. She self-pubbed her story
and it became "The" #1 seller on the New York Times best-seller's
list. Her name is Amanda Brown and her story is "Legally Blonde."
These are just a few author's that come quickly to mind.
I will self-publish if necessary, but there is one Canadian publishing company in particular for which that I believe my novel would be an excellent fit. If they don't take it, I will be looking to publish it myself.
The three stories I've written is about the same storyline that
encompasses 40+ years. The total word-count for the three is
well over 325,000 words. Not much different from your present
endeavor. I just found some good spots to "break" the story so I
could take a breather.
A good place to break my novel seems to be lacking. As it is I will be jumping into a sequel as soon as I finish this one. My current novel covers about 20 years: (1876-1897) I expect the sequel to cover 20-30 years.
With all of the hard work and time you've spent on your story,
would you want someone to "trash" up to 50% of it? I wouldn't.
I'd be screamin' like a mashed cat. :x I "would" pick 5 or 6
really close people you could trust and let them read it and
"""honestly""" give you their opinion about it. It takes GUTS
to put yourself "out-there" and let other people see your work.
It's personal....It's private.....It's a big part of.....YOU..!!
No one, myself included likes rejection, but as author's
we must take the risk. Otherwise, our stories are just words
on paper till we share them with others.
grumpy.
I won't trash it and I won't let anyone else trash it either. But sometimes less is more. As for rejection . . . I've been sending out stories since I was a teenager. Short stories first, a novel when I was about thirty and a children's chapter book about twelve years ago. Lots of false starts in between the two novels. I've been lucky in that the rejections for the novels did come sugar-coated in the form of pleasant letters complimenting my writing style and telling me why they were not buying the books. I did sell one short story when I was 17, to a boy scout magazine that occasionally published junior writers. That $70 was first real money I ever earned, aside from baby-sitting money.
