Issue III Archived

I will be happy to return the favor and be a Beta reader for you, or help in any way I'm able.

I have a plan, an outline, and a multitude of notes ready to create my first novel over the winter of 2020-2021. The draft version of 'Zombies, a Novel', will be ready late spring 2021. Hopefully going out to Beta readers and for critiques the summer of 2021. All other details will remain, for now, in my brain. ...

Stay tuned.

Below are links to a few short stories I wrote. The first three are the results from an exercise in 'voice' for the diymfa.com writing course I took in the spring of 2020. The fourth is the second short story I ever wrote, which I wrote as an entry for the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize.

Clicking a button will take you to my author website.

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Western (Foul Language/Mature Content)

WARNING: Spoilers Alert!

Weborbit, Mouse Attack, and An Itreyan Feast

The Rope

Before I tackle grammar and punctuation, a word or two about Word Count is in order. It is like grammar and punctuation in that everyone has an opinion and there is to be no discussion about said opinion.

Unfortunately, all too often an example of a word count will be: For fill-in-the-blank genre, it should be 85,000 to 115,000 words. And you can go a little less or a little more than that. They always make a scrunched-up face (in videos) while saying that last bit.

The problem with this is that, like an engineer telling a computer draftsman to draw something 300 to 700 mm high it is useless information.

Word counts should be precisely defined, and the best resource is whomsoever you are submitting your project to. Follow their rules. And by precisely I mean within a few thousand words for a novel. There is a reason most writing software can round word counts down to the nearest hundred, etc.

If you don t know where you will submit your project, research the genre etc. and use the average of RELIABLE sources.

And I mean reliable. Not one YouTube video, not one comparable published novel. Multiple videos, multiple comparables, and numbers from your specific genre. ... yes, you should pick one (or two), and, yes, you have to pick a word count. You need a target.

I will not give you a range of word count numbers for any genre and, even if I do, you should not take my word for it.

For example: my word count goal for Zombies, a Novel is 90,000. That does NOT mean that if you are writing a horror novel, 90,000 words is what you should use. I have decided that this is a reasonable goal for me, for this project, and I will not worry about it if it is a little less or a little more. ... remember, after writing comes editing.

After 14 months on a steep learning curve as a writer, this is the only rule I think worth following regarding word count:

A book cheaper to publish will in theory be more desirable to a publisher looking at taking on an unproven author.

Will I ever be able to change the name of this Newsletter?

Stay tuned, it could take a while.

Future newsletters may have Frequently Asked Questions. Send your question(s) to: Eric.

That's all for this month!

Thanks,

Eric C Bailey

The Newb Files, Science Fiction and Fantasy

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