YA fiction word count

For anyone writing YA for their novel, this is what Writer's Digest has to say about word count (which surprised me, pleasantly):

YOUNG ADULT

Perhaps more than any other, YA is the one category where word count is very flexible.

For starters, 55,000 – 69,999 is a great range.

The word round the agent blogosphere is that these books tend to trending longer, saying that you can top in the 80Ks. However, this progression is still in motion and, personally, I’m not sure about this. I would say you’re playing with fire the higher you go. When it gets into the 70s, you may be all right—but you have to have a reason for going that high. Again, higher word counts usually mean that the writer does not know how to edit themselves.

A good reason to have a longer YA novel that tops out at the high end of the scale is if it’s science fiction or fantasy. Once again, these categories are expected to be a little longer because of the world-building.

Concerning the low end, below 55K could be all right but I wouldn’t drop much below about 47K.

To read about word counts in other genres from Writer's Digest click here for full article.

Done!

I've passed the 50,000 word mark for my NaNoWriMo novel, Feather Lore, and I've just about decided that the first draft is complete. I'll begin editing this week, or next, and see where I can go from there.

This was my first year participating in NaNoWriMo, and I'm really proud of myself for passing the 50,000 word mark by day 19. In spite of having the flu last week, I managed to write everyday. Writing the draft was the easy part. Now the real work begins.

NaNoWriMo is in full swing!

Yesterday was the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I was up at midnight to get started, and finished 1,669 words before heading to bed at 1 a.m. In total, I completed 7,282 words for my first day, which I felt was a pretty good start.

While I won't be writing as much today, I will get more words in by later this evening. I hope to have somewhere between 10,000-15,000 words completed by the end of the day. That's the plan, but we'll see.