Dear Lovely Laser Eyes,

I understand you’ve got gobbledygook in your brain. You’ve decided to cut the word count of your novel from 121,000 words to 70,000 words? You’re sick.

~Concerned

Dear Concerned,

It sounds like self-punishment, I know. But I think it might be self-love.

Whuuut?

Last week, I got some advice from an author with a lot more experience in publishing. I asked her for some help with my pitch package. She took one look at my word count and told me, “No agent will look at your YA book with a word count of 121,000.”

When I was writing my book, I knew the word counts of YA were hovering around 60-80,000 but I ignored those numbers. Now, after getting over two dozen rejections from agents with zero requests for partials or fulls, I’m ready to kneel at the altar of the word count gods.

My goal has always been to publish traditionally. If you want to publish traditionally, you have to play by the industry rules.

Wish me luck, writer friends. Hopefully I’ll return with my sanity.