Word count and Ancient Egypt

Hey everybody, I'm back. I know I was supposed to put a blog entry up on Saturady but by the time I was able to get to it, The weekend had already passed. There's plenty of things that I want to talk about today (Even though I'm supposed to be sitting down reading twilight and working on chapter nineteen of my lastest draft of my novel).

Time to move on.

I was recently browsing the internet for something that was related to the young adult category and came across a website that had an article about word count when it came to YA novels. The article was so interesting that I decided to print it out and read what some of the literary agents, authors, and librarians said about what YA represents and how many pages a YA novel should have.

According to MiG's article on thier website MG vs. YA fiction what's the difference?
Here what one qoute said:

"The word round the agency blogosphere is that these books tend to trend longer, saying that you can top in the 80K. However, when it gets into the 70's you may be all right - but you have to have a reason for going that high. Again, higher word counts usually mean that the writer does not know how to edit themselves. A good reason to have a longer YA novel that tops out at the high end of the scale is if it's science fiction or fanstasy. Once again, these categories are expected to be a little longer because of the world-building."

"Concerning the low end, below 55k could be all right but I wouldn't drop much below 47k."

Interesting.

Well, I just recently checked the number of pages on my manuscript and come to find out, it's between 450 and 500 pages.

I'm in trouble.

The truth? I had forgotten all about the word count when it came to YA. I just got lost within the story, not knowing that there was a word limit to how much I could write without going overboard. I have to admit that when I read this article, I ended up being in a state of panic. Then, panic turned into depression...

For those who are thinking about writing a novel, ANY kind of novel...let me tell you: If you think that writing the first draft of your novel is the easiest thing in the world, you're right.

But rewriting the novel over and over again...That's the hardest part in the entire galaxy.

Once I finally got over my little episode of feeling sorry for myself, I got back up on my feet and ended up creating a chart (Well, it's supposed to be a chart but right now it's just a bunch of huge sentences all smashed together on a sheet of paper) about the history of Truson, The animan three-hundred (A blue chemical used throughout the story to create the shapeshifters in the first place) and eventually I'll end up creating a character worksheeet (I know I know, I should have done that in the first place what was I thinking? ) for all ten characters that will appear in the upcoming series of manuscripts that I intend on doing starting in 2010.

Who knows? Maybe I won't make any of the mistakes in the second manuscript of the series like I did in the first one. Hint of Advice: ALWAYS LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES.

Meanwhile, I'm also doing the first outline of the second novel in the series but I promised myself that I wasn't going to start on the novel until I finished the latest draft of my novel first.

Moving on...

While I was filling out the history of the Animan three-hundred, I actually did some reasearch on ancient Egypt and found out how much I really liked it. Did you know that ancient egyptians used a plant called a papryus to scribble their writings and roll them up so that they could take it with them everywhere they went? Did you know that the people who went to learn how to read and write mostly came from wealthy families while the peasants stayed at home and helped their mom out with the chores?

If you already know this stuff then good for you. If not, well consider it to be a lesson for the day.

I have to admit, I like doing this so-called chart because it's taking me back to where ancient civilization began...Egypt.

Okay, gotta go. I think I said WAY MORE then I was supposed to. See ya.

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