Word count marathon, day 4

Starting word count: 243,576

Ending word count after revising the remainder of Chapters 30, and 31 through 34: 241,861

# words cut: 1,715

Because I am a moron, I did the math today, and it sucks: 50,000 words is 169 pages, or 15 of my chapters. Great googily moogily.

So I decided that I’m just going to keep plugging away and trim however much I possibly can, and whatever the word count is by Wednesday, that’s what it’s going to be. And it’s probably going to be over 200,000, and that’s just going to be the way it is.

Because here’s the thing: the reason I leaped at this opportunity, even more than the workshop and the pitch critique opportunity, is that this is my chance to be seen by an agent (dream agent!) and it doesn’t count. Meaning, this is like a practice run at querying without having it count against me in the process, like taking the PSAT (yeah, that was the first analogy my nerd brain came up with).

When you query, and an agent rejects you, they don’t like resubmissions of the same project. In fact, they really, really, really hate it. It’s a big no-no. And they remember. Unless a signficant amount of time has passed and an even more significant amount of changes have been made to what you pitched previously (not to mention to the pitch itself), agents don’t take resubmissions.

For that reason, I’d planned to wait before I queried Agent Kristen to see what my first few rejections looked like, what kind of feedback (if any) I was getting, whether I got any requests for the first 30/synopsis/full*. I do still plan to wait until I’ve been through the query process a bit before I officially query Agent Kristen and my other top tier agents, but this is my chance to get a leg up.

So I’ll take whatever feedback she gives on the pitch and use it to make improvements, both to my query and my ms, and stop fretting that if I don’t have my number down to my 200,000 by goal, that I’ve somehow blown my big break. I haven’t.

*Depending on the agent, if they like your query, they’ll request your first 30 pages (or alternately, first 5 chapters), a synopsis, or the full manuscript. If an agent who’s known to request a full from queries s/he’s excited about instead requests the first 30 or a synopsis, it’s generally “your query intrigued me and I’d like to know more about your novel, but I’m not sure if it’s for me and I don’t want to waste your time or mine by requesting a full if I don’t like it”. A request for a full will still result in a rejection just as often as not, but it’s definitely a good sign.