Hi!
Finishing is always the hardest isn't it...
I used to think that, but apparently it's the everything else that happens after you finish a draft.
The revisions process seems more difficult than drafting a novel, and then begins the hard task of trying to get it published (or, in the case of self-publishing, the task of doing everything publishers usually handle, including marketing)
Can I ask why the limit at 80k words? I'm guessing it has to do with the genre you're working on?
Yeah, genre. Unfortunately with my first novel, I didn't learn about the quotas per genre until I was nearly done with the novel... and was already a bit over the quotas. It was YA, so it should be 60-80k, and it wound up being 102k. When I went to query it anyway, every rejection that listed a non-boilerplate reason noted the length.
Then I also didn't realize the age thing when it comes to YA, and set my protagonist's age at 14 for dramatic reasons (and to justify keeping the content a bit cleaner), but apparently that's right at the cusp which also makes it a harder sell.
Awesome about your series! What genre is it in?
YA paranormal thriller. I had said YA paranormal mystery (which may have also hurt me when querying), but mystery is a harder sell and technically it's more thriller than mystery. In the long-term, I'm thinking it might be 12-13 novels. The first three are more standalone with running continuity, the fourth (not yet drafted) novel is still roughly in that same vein although it sets up the next story arc, and then the next four would be more closely connected (culminating in a major event in book
and then the next 3 books would deal with the aftermath, and the final book will be set some years after the previous events.
I'm planning on writing the series regardless of whether it gets trade-published. I write pretty quickly, so I'd still be writing and querying other stuff. The big problem is just critique partners, betas, etc, which take time.
Beyond that, I write horror, fantasy, and then YA horror and paranormal. The WIP wound up being YA since I decided to try writing first-person present tense and the tone just went there. At some point, I might try writing MG/YA fantasy. I had always planned on just staying within the adult space except for that one series, but certain elements of my writing style (such as an emphasis on dialogue) seem a better fit for YA.
Where are you from?
Various parts of America, mostly states on the East Coast.
