Word Count
It's that time of year. My youngest son is back at college, and the middle one deep in his books for his next exam. Black looks all round. Inspiration flounders under the darkening gray of shortening days, so now I'm digging round all my old manuscripts to clean them up. Maybe they'll gleam and the word-counts might put a spark back into my dreams. My internet wanderings have led to a few surprising finds this year, including publishers looking for short novellas, novelettes and minis. So I dug out a favorite short story to see if I could make it grow. Reading in search of missing scenes led to writing and now it's reached 8,000 words - almost publishable, though a lot will depend on whether the extra words count for anything worthwhile. My completed novels weigh in at 65,000 and 80,000 words. I take them out and polish them every fall, but my latest rejection included the injunction to aim for 90,000 or more so there's still a way to go. Meanwhile the "work in...