I have eased up on what I wanted to get down to. Originally it was 120k, then 122k, then 123k, but now I'm just shooting for under 125k.
I'm pretty much done with outright cutting now. I did also add a few things during this shrinking process because they felt like they needed adding. I think natural tightening will get me the last 2-3k to get under 125k total.
But I'm sure you're right, you know immeasurably more than I do. Now that I'm not at 153k, it's all going to be up to making it clean, fixing the problems found by feedback (at least the ones I think are legit), and hoping it manages to find someone who likes the style which is sort of epic fantasy with juiced up pacing.
As someone who used to acquire books, the most important thing for me was an excellent story with characters that felt true. I can fix your semi-colons and your pacing and some other mechanics, but none of that is important, even if it's perfect, if the story doesn't really grab me.
Well, I like the story. Though I think I'd like it even better if I didn't know everything that was going to happen.
Oh that's cute. You need your own spoiler font for your thoughts.
I totally do.
This is fun, find out who you write like:
[link]
For my novel I get Robert Foster Wallace (shrug) whoever he is. My short story gets William Gibson which is awesome.
Apparently that I Write Like tool is just a page hit generator that doesn't actually do anything in the background.
Hmm... I never thought it was something to be taken seriously, but there's a little thing on how it supposedly works (basically like a spam filter).
[link]
I did that a week or two ago. When I pasted a Lost recap into that, I got Joyce, which is way too apt for a page hit generator (not that I'm anything approaching Joyce, but the nature of recapping + the nature of Lost is very Joycian). When I pasted fic into it, I got Atwood (Buffy fic) and the guy who wrote Fight Club, whose name I'm too lazy to Google (VM fic). I understand Atwood got Stephen King, which tickles me.
eta the reason I really posted
This morning, I had to run to the store really early. I saw a man and he spawned a whole book in my head (not like that; he wasn't particularly hot or anything). I'm going to sleep now and am praying I get a Stephanie Meyer-esque dream of the whole damn story, because thinking is hard. Heck, learning enough about my Macbook to set up the document was hard enough.
Hey, Cindy, did you ever get the email I sent?
Oh Amy, I did and totally spaced on it. I'll reply right now. Thank you!