How NOT to Write a Novel Part 3: The Hacksaw

170,000+ words isn’t a debut contemporary fiction novel.

It’s an unopened file your potential publisher never asked for.

It is a RED FLAG to any self-respecting agent.

No one will represent you.

No one will publish you.

Nor should they. That’s too many words and most of them are awful and unnecessary, and if this is you, take a hacksaw to the goddamn thing PRONTO.

It took me over a year—working a handful of hours a week, mind you—to chop my first draft of The Old Man Played Three (now First Ride) down to a slightly more respectable, but still heinous 134,000+ words.

In that time, I started researching and learned that debut novels for literary fiction are usually under 100,000 words.

Fuck. Me.

Here’s where defiance kicked in. What was an extra 30k words if they were really good words? I was sure I was going to be that author that was the exception to the 100k rule. My book was fantastic, and I’d gone through the horror that Stephen King calls “murdering your darlings,” or “killing your darlings,” or something with darling, which basically means that even if you love a sentence, paragraph, page, or chapter (especially if you love it), if the book doesn’t need it, CUT IT.

But what if it’s good, I—and every other NYT Bestselling hopeful—cries.

To which Mr. King says that we’re writers. If we’re getting paid, it’s all supposed to be good.

Or something like that.

Oof.

But conform to industry standards? Hard pass, I thought. I’d already eviscerated my book to the point that whole limbs (stops on the trip of my massive travel novel) were gone, and in their place, bloody stumps remained where I desperately tried to connect the frayed tendons of one section to the stringy nerves of another. It was painful. And I felt like I was losing the soul of the book.

And, despite how vigilant I was with the saw, I couldn’t get The Old Man Played Three to survive with less than 130k words.

If I had known how much more work was coming, I might’ve quit. But I didn’t know…not even as the heavy hand of defeat settled on my shoulder and I called my sister.

Renee…I think I have to write another book.