Word Counts

Word Count: 99501

Hi, welcome to my journey to being published. I will be writing blog posts every week updating you on how my writing is going. So far I am halfway through the "first draft" of my fantasy novel, Kingdom of Sand. I hesitate to say first draft because I have not been organized so far so there are parts that I have spent hours agonizing over, and others that I have rushed through. Hopefully when I write my second book (cross my fingers) I will have a system in place to make the whole process easier. For now I will just have to suck it up.

At the moment I am debating whether my novel should be split up into two books, or one really long one. I have been researching word counts and many websites say that a fantasy novel, especially young adult which is what I am gearing towards, should be from 85000-110000 words. They do say that it always depends on the quality of the writing and many other extraneous factors but I still worry. Outside that bracket it's only the minority that get published and if I want the highest chance of succeeding and being published then I need to be in the majority.

Either way I think that I am going to finish the entire story before I make a final decision. I am guessing that I will finish with a word count just under 200000 words so I have a long time to figure all of this out. Even if I decide to split it into two books then I will be able to tell the literary agent that I query that I have the sequel finished as well, which can only be a good thing.

If any of you have any advice or input please feel free to comment below. Many of my favourite novels tend to be on the longer side but I don't want to give a literary agent any reason to reject my book.