As I've studied up on literary agents for the past week or so, something has become painfully obvious: I have a lot more editing to do.
Going by pages, I thought I had it down to a nice, reasonable length: 315 pages, single-spaced, without starting new chapters on a fresh page.
Well, everybody wants manuscripts double-spaced, so my book would be 630 pages -- if an agent even asks to read my entire book based on my query letter -- and it appears that 100,000 words or less is an acceptable length.
My book is 180,000 words ... or so.
That means I need to cut more than 80,000 words -- almost half of my book. The good news and the bad news is that the last couple of times I've read it, I got to a point about two-thirds of the way into it where I thought, "Aha! I need to get here sooner!" That means there's a lot that could be cut. That also means there's a lot of work yet to do.
So much for being done and ready to publish. On to the next rough draft!
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