A Stitch in Time

We have a sickness. As we write, we always try to estimate how many words long the finished manuscript will be. Why? Who knows. It doesn’t really matter, unless we’re coming up really short or going suuuuuper long. But still we obsess. We try to look at the outline and guess how many pages it represents, when we know in our bones that it’s a pointless endeavor. Some sections of the outline are incredibly detailed, others are done in broad strokes. It’s an inexact science.

Currently we are halfway through the outline for Sibling of Music Novel. 36 scenes have been written, and six more are stubbed and ready to go. Does that mean that we are halfway through the novel? Our guts say “not quite.” And since the manuscript is sitting at a hair over 71,000 words right now, that suggests that we’re looking at a finished product of something like 150,000 words. Which is quite a lot, in case you were wondering.

— insert all the typical caveats about editing and its impact on word count here —

Since we’re fairly confident that this one will be long enough, we’ve begun scrutinizing the outline for ways to consolidate scenes. Jen took it one step further and was reviewing the stubs still awaiting our tender ministrations. Turns out that there’s a stub for a scene that now feels unnecessary. By not writing it we’ll save ourselves the time that would have taken, plus time in editing when we would have agonized over removing it. The events in the ghost scene still happened to the characters, but we’re confident that they’re minor enough to be mentioned in passing. And if it turns out we’re wrong and all the characters want to do is talk about the events that happened off-screen, well then we’ll go back and write it later.

A writing partner is someone who can help you see around these kinds of corners.