I’m doing a complete edit-through [what, it's not a word? Guess I just invented one!], and when I started the full ms was about 90,000 words, but the final five chapters hadn’t been touched in months and were pretty short compared to the rest of the work.
I’m about 75% of the way through the manuscript. I currently have 87,000 words….
…with 18,000 words in the ‘deleted scraps’ document that I began at the start of the edit-through.
No wonder this is taking a while.
Thankfully, around chapter 8 I really revved into high gear with regard to reducing the filler and getting more character-motivated plot going. I think when I go through the book next, I’ll be trimming a lot of fat from the earlier chapters.
I’d prefer to stay between 80-90K, but there’s some wiggle room here.
