MG Ruined Me

I've grown accustomed to writing really lean too. It would be hard for me to switch back. It sounds like you have a great opportunity if you're willing to tackle it. One way to look at it-If you do lengthen the book, even if this editor doesn't go for it, you'll have one ready to go to send to others.

Hedge, you are on a roll. That's fantastic!

Is this the story that has the football game in it? With the mysterious forest? I loved that. I've never tried YA, so I can't really offer any advice on what to do with it. Sometimes a story is done in 37K words. Sometimes you can weave in another subplot. I'd just be wary of padding for the sake of padding. I think any writer should make every word count, every scene count. If not, you just won't have a very good story.

And I agree with Melia, at the worst, you have something ready to send out to others.

Good luck!

Ha! My MG isn't that lean. I still tend to write longer. My only good suggestion would be to get a couple really strong YA betas and specifically ask them what might be missing -- scenes to be added, or subplots to move forward. Hey, that's a thought! How about a whole new subplot with a minor character? You could weave that throughout.

If you fell there's a good sub-plot brewing, then I'd go for it.
Congratulations, looks like you are making some serious inroads!

Here's another way to think about it:

People read to be carried away. To have a full and rich experience. 37K just may not provide that for an almost-mature reader.

It's sort of about math, if you think about it. A 10-year-old kid, even a good reader like my son who has read over a million words since September, only reads about 140 words in a minute. 140 words X 60 minutes = 8400 words in an hour. At that rate, your book would be about 5 hours of enjoyment. That's a good length, not too long for a kid to manage.

But for a teen reader, who is approaching 300+ words in a minute, the equation changes. (To be successful, a college student needs to read about 350 words a minute.) 300 words X 60 minutes = 18,000 words in an hour. So your book only offers a teenager about 2 hours of joy.

If the reader loves it, they want to be lost in your world for longer than that. Don't you just hate it when you come to the end of a book? Don't you just wish it would go on forever?

That's what you're aiming for.

Now, I know exactly what you mean. I'm struggling to get my boy-and-his-dog book to hit 30,000 words, but every time I add a scene, I find some other part that could be trimmed and my word count stays the same...

Hedgetrimmer said:

Oh, well. Looks like I'll still be getting up at 2:00 to write.

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Well, now we know how you got so much done in such a short time. How do you keep your brain cells from melting and producing gibberish?

Yeah, I can see how that would get mind-numbing after a while.

Being a teacher is exhausting, but at least it's rewarding.

I don't know what I'll do if I ever have some income from writing. Teaching isn't something you can really do part-time, and it's hard to imagine quitting it completely. But having time to write every day sure sounds appealing...

I know I'll have more time in a few years, when my boys are grown and gone, but then I'll miss them!

Hedgetrimmer said:

I got two things accomplished yesterday. I sent the revised Sweetness to the agent, hoping she might find time to read it over the weekend, and I wrote the editor back letting her know what I plan to do to lengthen my thriller. She said she would like to see it once it meets an acceptable word count. Now I just have to make it happen.

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Congratulations on getting that done! I always wonder how much work agents do over the weekend--I've gotten replies (read: rejections ) on Saturdays and Sundays, and with her interest level, I bet there's a good chance that she might take a look.

I don't know how you can do all that transcribing--it must be exhausting. I did it back in grad school for professors who were working on new research on National and State Park Interpretation Programs. I sat around for hours listening to 6 to 10 year-olds answer questions about their field trips...needless to say, the transcriptions were full of "uh...well, uh...hey, we got CRANBERRY juice boxes for lunch, and--Oh, yeah, um...squirrels. Yep, we saw a lot of squirrels."

Tee-hee.

JudScotKev said:

If the reader loves it, they want to be lost in your world for longer than that. Don't you just hate it when you come to the end of a book? Don't you just wish it would go on forever?

That's what you're aiming for.

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Jud, I always think about that when I'm reading. I rarely pick up a book, even middle grade, even from the library, that is less than 250 pages.

Hedge, you've been busy. Great to have so many interesting projects to work on!

Interesting discussion going on here.

Though I have to say JSK's math theory on what's too long worries me a bit.
In part because even though I'm way past high school, I don't think I can read 300 words a minute, and I sure don't consider myself a bad reader for it.

That said, I know what she means.

Even so, I have the opposite problem. The more I make the effort to be lean, the more I get told it's "Not detailed enough" and I have to add more so the scenes make sense. Yeah, I know that's counterproductive, but I'd rather have a long book, than a short one that no can understand but me. You know?

Granted, I don't want a 1,000 page train wreck, no one does, but I just barely manage to keep under 50,000 words for most of my novels, excluding Gabriel, for the time being anyway...

Word count can be confusing to me too. The MG I've got coming out is 60K. When someone says the word count is too low, I do have a feeling they're saying they want to be immersed more in the story.

The MG I have on sub is 67,000 words. Granted, it isn't SOLD and it's upper MG. I do think if it is sold I'll have to cut some, but I cut as much as made sense at the time.

Quotation from Cards on the Table, by Agatha Christie. The speaker is a Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer: "I always think I'm finished, and then when I count up I find I've written thirty thousand words instead of sixty thousand, and so then I have to throw in another murder and get the heroine kidnapped again. It's all very boring."

Some say Oliver is Christie's alter ego, so you're in good company, anyway!