Louise Marley

When I wrote my very first novel, I took to heart someone's advice that a novel should be 300 manuscript pages.  It turned out that wasn't good advice, but when we're starting out in this rather complicated and mysterious business, we cling to crumbs of information as we try to figure out what we're supposed to do.  I wrote the 300 pages, and the first thing my prospective agent told me was that my manuscript was too short.

Somehow I stopped worrying about length for a time.  I wrote three novels, each roughly 100,000 words each.  My next book, THE TERRORISTS OF IRUSTAN, came in at 600 manuscript pages, or about 150,000 words.  I didn't think much of it until my publisher asked me to cut 75 pages.  Suddenly I became hyperaware of the issue of length in a book.  (It was a better book for being tighter, by the way.  I learned a lot through that process!)

Technically, a novel is anything over 40,000 words, although there is disagreement on that (naturally).  A novella is 17,500 words, up to 39,999.  A novelette can be 7,500 words to 17, 499 (again, depending on whose rules you follow.)  A short story is generally considered to be anything under 10,000 words.

But a novel?  Even a young adult novel is expected to be 60,000 words, as I learned when I received my first contract for one.  There are trends in these things, I'm finding.  For a time, and quite recently, publishers were looking for shorter novels, 90,000 words or 95,000 words.  Such works are less expensive to print, and therefore--we hope--more profitable.  I've always had a little difficulty writing to that length, although IRUSTAN's excessive length has never gotten hold of me again.

My new contract specifies 115,000 words, and this catches me by surprise.  The trend has changed again.  This may be in part due to the ease of publishing electronic versions of our novels, or it may be that by asking for 115,000 words a publisher can be certain of getting a "real" book into their hands.   Ideally, of course, a story should be as long as it needs to be.  But this is a business, albeit an artistic one. As working writers, we have to take these things into account.

For those of you under contract, do you know what your current contract specifies?  Do you take that into consideration when you're writing?  And what if your word count runs significantly under (or over) the requested length?  Any editors out there have some insight?

Since Mozart's Blood has been released, I'm hearing this question a lot.  A musical novel is not new for me, nor even a historical novel, but a vampire novel--that's a change.  Authors can only hope that readers will follow them as they explore new ideas, but I have to admit to noticing a few raised eyebrows among my readership.  At a booksigning just last week, this was the question I was asked.

Why vampires?  I think the answer varies for different authors and for different readers.  When I set out to write the story of an opera singer who is also a vampire, I avoided vampire literature for a time.  As with other forms of magic, each system of vampirism has its own rules and requirements, and my vampires are no exception.  They don't sparkle, and they don't avoid the sun.  They can eat fine food--mostly Italian, of course--and drink good wine.  They have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they pay a unique price for the nearly-eternal life vampirism grants them.

In some vampire worlds, it's clear that sexual titillation is primary.  In others there is a delicious sense of danger, of flirting with the mysterious and exciting darkness of a world in which anything can happen.  In some, of course, as with Bram Stoker's vampire, the creatures are evil, and have to be battled. 

In my vampire world, and in that of a few others--Barb Hendee's comes to mind--I think vampirism means power.  As with the young adult books I wrote (as Toby Bishop) in which girls fly winged horses, power is a currency much to be desired, and to be wielded judicially.  When a young girl is on the back of a big horse, she is both beautiful and powerful.  When Teresa Saporiti of Mozart's Blood shares the tooth with Mozart, she acquires a musical power she never had--and a long, long life in which to wield it.

The phenomenon is fascinating, and I'm still exploring it.  Bookstores have entire shelves devoted to vampire literature, both in adult and young adult sections.   Why do you think vampires have such appeal?

The fine fantasist Cat Rambo   showed me how she knows a story or a sentence or a chapter is working by pointing to a spot about two inches above and to the left of her heart.  That may seem odd to some, but to me, it made perfect sense:  my own spot is right in my solar plexus.  When a piece of writing has come out just the way I had hoped, that spot tingles, as if I had fitted a plug into a socket, or dropped a peg into a perfectly-sized hole.

There's nothing scientific about this, of course.  It's an idiosyncratic response to the artist's instinct.  Like most of you, Cat and I read books on writing, take classes and workshops, follow blogs--in other words, study our craft.  But in the end, all instructive input has to be processed through each writer's inner judge, that intuition that informs our art.

There's an old story about Chinese sculptors who carve and carve and carve until someone takes the work away from them.  I might be a bit like that with my novels.  Fortunately, I have contracts to organize and direct me (see The Joy of Deadlines) but there is still that urge to polish and prune, expand and trim, rewrite and revise until that moment when I know--in a mystical way--that it's right.  Of course we have to worry about word count, and grammar, and spelling and so forth.  But when the story has taken its proper shape, it almost feels predestined.  To use another sculpting metaphor, it's as if the story was in the stone all along, and we just had to take out the non-story parts.

This can't be taught.  It can only be encouraged.  Every artist has insecurities, performance anxieties, doubts.  It's not easy reaching that point where you know it's right--or I should say, when you feel it's right.  But that's a feeling to be trusted.  Not blindly, not exclusively--it's not an excuse for bad writing--but with faith in that inner instinct. It can't be quantified, and it can't be formulized. This is art, not science.