One good thing about writing fast–since the first book (which was NOT written quickly) I haven’t had anything that needed a lot of pruning. Taro’s book is less than 70,000 words, so it actually needs to get longer. Most publishers’ guidelines ask for 80-100k. That’s not set in stone, but it is pretty inflexible. Less than 80,000 words and people don’t want to pay the going rate for such a small book. More than 100,000 and you’re raising the printing costs. Publishers don’t like that.
You’d think that writing more would be easy. After all, I just wrote 50,000 words in twenty-four days.  What’s another 10,000?
Extremely difficult, actually. Every last one needs to go in exactly the right place, or mess up the whole. Each needs to be important, necessary, vital. I need to grow my book a little, shape it–not pad it.
So I need to be careful. And it’s not easy to remember that. I really, truly, love these characters. I think the book is already damned good. It’s definitely a fast, fun read. All of which makes it far too tempting to just keep reading and forget editing.  It would be a lot easier to spot things that needed cutting.
Or so I say now. I seem to remember whining a lot about having to chop Eve…
Anyway. Back to it. Publication awaits!Â