By The Ruler

This post was inspired after catching clips of a book discussion on CSPAN2. Although I didn’t catch every word of the discussion, I did catch the overall vibe. The host, Slate Books Culture Columnist Laura Miller, queried panelists (a Simon & Schuster exec and CNN political writer) on publishing issues, and ways to address those issues. Of course, my ears perked right up. Long before we arrived at today, I was giving book publishers of all classes and weights my two cents on how I felt and what I saw…and this was when I knew a lot less than what I know today. 😳 That’s what tickled me, when I heard Laura and the exec laughing at themselves about not wanting to make any ‘more’ predictions. 

Now, I’m not going to go there…with the ‘I told you so’…but will put it like this. The VERY first thing I learned from professional book publishers was TO KNOW (or in my case at the time) TO LEARN THE INDUSTRY! 

So, now here I am, about to publicize my knowledge on ‘How Big Should a Book Be?’

The traditional standard for novels is 80,000 words. First time novelists, or writers of any genre absolutely should not exceed this number. Books with fewer than 40,000 words are novelettes, or perhaps children’s books… or tabletop books. Therefore, the desired word-range for books, range between 40,000 and 80,000 words. Of course, most of us ‘book readers' know of books that go well beyond this range. My first novel was over 100,000 words! I mean, like how’s that for learning the industry and heeding directions!?😆

This brings me to answering the question. 

The greatest cardinal writing sin is writing and writing, to meet a word count. I’ve personally seen this done, and It.Is.Painful, both to read and write.

A greater cardinal writing sin is writing a story missing the meat and potatoes. Like, have you ever been invited to dinner, and went there hungry as you-know-what, and there was no meat and potatoes? ...Only saltine crackers and placemats?!

A book should be as big as the story.

FYI. With the attention span being what it is today, I would cut any excess, if possible. 😉

#StillWriting #TakingaQuickBreak #INSPIRATION #KnowingisGrowing #BookDiscussion #JustBlogged