First Cup of Coffee - March 14, 2025

Regarding manuscript length and (seriously) what traditional publishing does and does not require, but signs that a book is really too long. (See pacing.) Also knowing when rewriting is FAR better than revising, and new earrings!

Vivian Shaw's jewelry shop BleedingHartStudio is here https://www.etsy.com/shop/bleedinghartstudio/?etsrc=sdt

RELUCTANT WIZARD is out now and audiobook is live!! https://www.jeffekennedy.com/reluctant-wizard

You can preorder STRANGE FAMILIAR at https://www.jeffekennedy.com/strange-familiar and MAGIC REBORN at https://www.jeffekennedy.com/magic-reborn

The posture-correcting sports bra I love almost more than life itself is here https://forme.therave.co/37FY6Z5MTJAUKQGA

Join my Patreon and Discord for mentoring, coaching, and conversation with me! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/JeffesCloset

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books! https://www.beastlybooks.com/

If you want to support me and the podcast, click on the little heart or follow this link (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/jeffekennedy).

Sign up for my newsletter here! (https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/r2y4b9)

You can watch this podcast on video via YouTube https://youtu.be/y14t3bGDD9A

Transcript

00:01.71
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.40
Jeffe Kennedy
Today Say It With Me People, Say It Loud, Say It's Friday. March 14th. Halfway through March. I don't know about you, but time is flying for me.

00:29.19
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, we are very stormy and blustery today. um I don't know if I changed this so you could see out the window. If you're on video, you could see the rain chain and the roostras, um, knocking on the wind and all the snow outside.

00:48.81
Jeffe Kennedy
very blizzardy blustery. ah tu tu It looks like snow. Apparently this is a great big storm. So my mom said they got rain in Tucson last night and it's supposedly like sweeping across the country.

01:06.19
Jeffe Kennedy
oh My friend Kelly in Toronto has plane tickets to fly to Chicago tomorrow and is worried that their flights are going to get canceled, which they probably will.

01:17.36
Jeffe Kennedy
It's just, um Yeah. Welcome to spring.

01:26.16
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, okay. So, I mean, I'm still standing. um I'm doing all right. i want to show you all, I should have taken off the stopper. Look at my beautiful new earrings. I will describe them for those of you not on video.

01:40.81
Jeffe Kennedy
But the delightful Vivian Shaw, who has an amazing jewelry Etsy store, which I will link to, um made these. I'm trying to get a good focus.

01:52.00
Jeffe Kennedy
Aren't those beautiful? It's Venetian glass. So for those of you not on video, it's a... um Let's see. I need to... One of the problems is is I am out of words. My brain is like total mush.

02:06.92
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So it is a one, a shape that I can't think of the name of. It's kind of like a teardrop only it's pinched on both ends and it's white and it's got spiraling black lines.

02:20.84
Jeffe Kennedy
And at the bottom are two more beads, one that's white with black, kind of like a spider webbing in it. And the bottom one is darker, like a dark gray with black lines in it.

02:34.85
Jeffe Kennedy
And they're really beautiful. They catch the light. Um, I saw Vivian the other day because she is married Arkady Martine, who many of you probably have read Arkady's books.

02:49.51
Jeffe Kennedy
They live here in Santa Fe. And Arkady had launch. Oh, I should grab her book. That would be nice of me. Okay. Hang on.

03:01.64
Jeffe Kennedy
Okay. So Arkady just came out with this book called Rose House. Okay. um It's kind of Rose Slash House, but isn't that a neat cover? It's really pretty.

03:13.22
Jeffe Kennedy
It was originally published by Subterranean Press, and then Tor took it back and published it in this lovely little ah hardbound edition. It's not a long book. It's um a novella, probably, 115 words, but I got a copy of it.

03:33.34
Jeffe Kennedy
It's interesting because... Tor is doing a lot of this. Tor is for their authors that are doing very well because um Ursula Vernon who writes as T. Kingfisher mentioned this also that Tor wants like some of her backlist wanted to buy like some of her self published books um like with Arkady they're picking up these books that were published with other presses, small presses.

04:05.24
Jeffe Kennedy
So it's interesting. It's like they're wanting to capture the catalog of their, um, their authors that are doing great, which is interesting. and Did I mention interesting? It's it's cool.

04:18.37
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, it's different. And so, um, I wonder how much of this is Debbie polite driving things. I think Debbie is super smart. Um, yeah,

04:29.73
Jeffe Kennedy
One thing about self-publishing authors is that it can be tempting when a big publisher like Tor offers to buy your self-published books.

04:41.82
Jeffe Kennedy
The thing is, is you will never make as much money on the e-books online. with tour as you do on your own, especially if they're already selling decently, but it can be super, super worth it to get their ability to do this beautiful oh print version and distribute. They're still all over Indies on distribution.

05:06.20
Jeffe Kennedy
So, uh, so yeah, um, Ursula was saying, no, she's not selling them that self published series. And I think that's the smart smart choice.

05:17.67
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, oh, so anyway,

05:23.55
Jeffe Kennedy
ah

05:26.02
Jeffe Kennedy
Arkady has a day job that's incredibly busy right now. So she just had like a soft lunch, um hung out at a bar here downtown, one of the ones I liked, and invited some of us to come join her. So ah we went and had some drinks, toasted her, got a copy of the book, and I chatted with Vivian, who was, I don't remember why we were looking at her Etsy store,

05:51.91
Jeffe Kennedy
But I'm going to link to it. I like her card. It's a Bleeding Heart Studio at Etsy. So it's bleedingheartstudio.etsy.com.

06:05.51
Jeffe Kennedy
And I just love her jewelry designs. I got that bracelet a while back. I think I told you all about it. So anyway, I spotted these earrings on there and I was like, I must have these earrings.

06:16.11
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So now they are mine. yeah I'm such an easy target for her. ah Yeah. So ah check out, I mean, fair warning.

06:27.43
Jeffe Kennedy
If you go check it out, you will probably want to buy some, but she does such a ah lovely job.

06:35.87
Jeffe Kennedy
Okay. So um

06:39.87
Jeffe Kennedy
those were things I wanted to talk about. Okay. Bye. No, I'm kidding. All right. So, Where am I at with all the things I am going to put a photo on the show notes. I am down to the last three days of the tip in sheets and the last three piles.

06:58.15
Jeffe Kennedy
So i i should make it, which is good because UPS is scheduled come pick them up on Monday. i have my labels. So i'm going to be concentrating on those um books.

07:12.62
Jeffe Kennedy
All right. So, I technically, i feel like there needs to be a word technically with an asterisk. Do we have a gesture for that?

07:24.44
Jeffe Kennedy
but Technically with a footnote, um, mostly finished the revision of a rose in the mirror on Wednesday.

07:35.36
Jeffe Kennedy
Now, before you cheer, I mean, yes, it's good. Yeah. Thank you. Um, but before we go too much further, ah I ended up, I've revised all the way up to the act three climax, which is at 95,000 words.

07:54.51
Jeffe Kennedy
And then i I, cut the last few chapters. I started to look at, what is it? The last four chapters.

08:06.41
Jeffe Kennedy
I started to look at the last four chapters and realized that that it would be easier to rewrite them than revise them. And this is a, an instinct thing and intuition thing and experience thing.

08:25.84
Jeffe Kennedy
oh But one thing I have found that is almost categorically true. Can something be almost categorically true? You'll spot me this one. It's almost categorically true that if something has been piece of writing, has been sitting for a long time, or if it is has presented a lot of problems, it is almost always true that it's easier to rewrite it than revise it.

08:57.00
Jeffe Kennedy
And this feels counterintuitive because you have all of those words. In my case, i ended up cutting out like, 8,000 words. People, my outtake documents for this book is 40,000 words.

09:13.98
Jeffe Kennedy
40,000 words i have pulled out of my original draft and put into the outtakes file. Now, usually when I revise, I'll pull a chunk into the outtakes file.

09:26.64
Jeffe Kennedy
And then when I put it back into the the manuscript I cut so the outtakes file will go down.

09:37.78
Jeffe Kennedy
This time I changed it up and I'm not sure I could tell you exactly why, except that I copied. And it was partly because I wanted to keep track of exactly how things had been and the original. Now I still have my first draft, so I could have found that pretty easily, but for some reason my instinct this time was to copy.

10:00.86
Jeffe Kennedy
So a whole lot of those words went back into the manuscript. but that's how many I pulled out of place because I changed the sequence of things. And so that messed things up, but 8,000 words of those final four chapters, um, went into the outtakes document and are probably pretty much going to stay there.

10:25.48
Jeffe Kennedy
And why? um

10:29.81
Jeffe Kennedy
because the ending, and want to say this very profoundly because mark this down, my children. The ending has changed.

10:40.83
Jeffe Kennedy
and da so I mean, of course, the ending has changed slightly, but kind of the emotional arcs of where everybody is at has changed profoundly.

10:51.90
Jeffe Kennedy
And it's one of those things that, and I think there's also a word for this that I'm just not going to be able to think of, but it's one of those deals where, you know, like you have a slight change at the beginning, which sort of moves your points apart just a small amount.

11:08.44
Jeffe Kennedy
But then as the trajectory goes on, they diverge more and more. And by the time you get to the end, they are ah far distance apart.

11:19.91
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So, so yeah, the, the motivations are all different. There may be a lot of the same events. Maybe not, maybe not.

11:32.58
Jeffe Kennedy
Anyway, the upshot is, is I do have to pretty much write the ending again. So it's going to be eight to 10,000 words. Um, is that what I figured?

11:45.28
Jeffe Kennedy
um to to actually it may only be like 6,500 words. We'll see. But so I had a conversation Tuesday morning, Tuesday morning,

12:01.50
Jeffe Kennedy
with editor Ali and i wanted to ask her about one thing where I had been considering pulling something out, cutting something entirely.

12:14.55
Jeffe Kennedy
And I wanted to know her thoughts on that. And we ended up keeping it. Uh, she said she understood my impulse, why I felt like that might be the thing to do.

12:26.08
Jeffe Kennedy
But then she also agreed that, um,

12:31.41
Jeffe Kennedy
Yeah, that there's cool stuff in there. There's reasons to cut it. There's reasons to keep it. And so I was interested that she didn't have a stronger opinion than than i did on it. It was like, well, it could go either way.

12:46.15
Jeffe Kennedy
Did you hear the kitty cry? Hang on. My baby cat was locked out of the room. It was tragic. Almost almost a disaster, but we we've saved him.

12:57.41
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, so, ah one thing that Ali said, which I thought that you all would find interesting. No pause.

13:08.63
Jeffe Kennedy
Now there's a cat on my desk. Um, no pause. This should be a hashtag for the, uh, podcast now to the no using pause.

13:21.60
Jeffe Kennedy
So, um, sorry for all of the distraction. I totally blame Killian. No pause. Um,

13:31.29
Jeffe Kennedy
Okay. I've got my head on straight again. Uh, one thing that Ali said was, he said, okay, so this was before I knew that I was cutting the last four chapters. Uh, I said, I'm going to have this book done by the end of the week.

13:45.41
Jeffe Kennedy
huh And should we've talked originally about that? She was expecting it on the 17th deadline, April 1st.

13:56.59
Jeffe Kennedy
And I said, well, I can send it to you at the end of this week. Uh, for the weekend, if you're wanting to read over the weekend or for Monday, the expected date.

14:07.91
Jeffe Kennedy
I said, but I do know it needs one more smoothing pass. And she said, well, that she didn't want to edit something that, uh, or comment on something that I already knew I needed to change, which I thought was interesting because we've talked about that. Which way do you go on that?

14:25.88
Jeffe Kennedy
um And so it was great to have her take on that. And then she also said, and this is something that all of you can and don't learn from that.

14:36.50
Jeffe Kennedy
She was looking, I could tell she was looking at her schedule and she said, I have several things on my plate right now. And she said, actually later is better. Beginning of April is better for me to read this book. So that worked out great.

14:49.55
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, the other thing that we talked about was, and this is again, before I knew I was cutting those last four chapters is I said, if I don't cut the section that she and I had talked about section cutting, I said it might make the book longer.

15:06.53
Jeffe Kennedy
And she said, well, that really just isn't the highest priority. And I put that on social media as a data point because I keep hearing from authors that like, oh, traditional publishers won't publish books longer than X, Y, Z. And and I'm sorry to make that sound whiny.

15:26.47
Jeffe Kennedy
But it's one of those things where people are throwing out very confidently this common wisdom of, oh, no, your book can't be longer than 85,000 words or they won't publish it.

15:39.97
Jeffe Kennedy
And I'm sorry, it's just BS. It's not true. ah Witness Ali telling me this, that length is really not the highest priority here.

15:50.17
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, she's basically telling me to go as long as I need to. she said if i She said, when I read it, if I see sections that I think need to be cut, we can talk about it then.

16:01.30
Jeffe Kennedy
Now, see, this is the key, people. And I really want you to listen to this. um those of you, especially those of you disagreeing with me on this, because immediately I got, when I put this on social media, I got that guy popping up saying how ah it was a counterpoint, but that he had just gotten rejected by an agent for having um his two science fiction books are like 86,000 words each with a cliffhanger and the middle. And that she said the pacing was too slow.

16:34.70
Jeffe Kennedy
and that and that was and witnessed that it was too long right well pacing length can be an indication of bad pacing but slow pacing is its own problem right and this is especially true of newer authors It's just like if you've been listening to everything I've been saying so far about going through this revision process and deciding, do these entire sections need to be cut?

17:08.55
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Do I need to rewrite the ending? Because if I try to massage what's already there, it feels counterintuitive because I've got those 8,000 words that are already written, but I could spend a lot of, a lot of time. And believe me, I've been there.

17:26.19
Jeffe Kennedy
massaging those to make that fit. And it's, I can just tell, I can feel it, that it's going to be easier and better to simply write that ending anew.

17:40.94
Jeffe Kennedy
um

17:43.57
Jeffe Kennedy
The reason why people are told and I don't know. I got other people popping up because like, there's something about when you publish, when you put out there any kind of publishing advice, these people pop out of the word work who simply have to give their two, three, four, five, six cents.

18:06.19
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, because I had someone popping up on Facebook saying, Oh, well here are the word count limits for you'll like Harlequin or something like that. Um, I really feel like I could be wrong.

18:21.12
Jeffe Kennedy
Yes. There are certain imprints like Harlequin that don't go past like 60 words, 60 words. Yeah. That'd be some good flash. 60,000 words.

18:32.20
Jeffe Kennedy
That is not what I'm talking about. It's obviously not what I'm talking about, which is why it's irritating to have people pop in and say those things. um The thing is, is that,

18:46.11
Jeffe Kennedy
A lot of words can be an indication that an author doesn't know what to trim. And it can be an indication of a slow pace. It can be an indication of fat, of stuff that needs to be trimmed out to make it lean and mean and muscular and move along at that pace that you need it to.

19:09.01
Jeffe Kennedy
ah And not, not to brag on, on myself, on your girl here, yeah, my editor is not worried about my pacing. Okay. Actually I've almost never gotten, some people find my books to have a slower feel to them, um, which is deliberate, but, uh, you know, my pacing is not a problem.

19:34.94
Jeffe Kennedy
And so my, in fact, I tend to write on the the short side. If anything, I add, uh, or replace. Uh, So, so Ali knows that by saying length is not the highest priority here is she wants me to feel free to write as much as I need to, to get the story correct.

19:58.55
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, those of you who, you know, I'm sorry, I know it's frustrating, but especially when you're a newbie author, ah that's a very, very common problem. It's just because you don't know what doesn't need to be in there yet.

20:13.98
Jeffe Kennedy
And so when you're pitching a book and somebody tells you, well, that sounds like it's too long. Let me give you an example. I was offering advice, free advice once to ah a friend of a friend, a newbie author in the bar at a conference. And my friend asked me to sit down and listen to their pitch and give them feedback on it. So, you know,

20:37.39
Jeffe Kennedy
I just put this in a professional email yesterday. ah Hand me a glass of bubbly and I'm your girl. So yeah, I sat there and listened. And one thing was, is this was like a YA fantasy of some sort or maybe, yeah.

20:51.27
Jeffe Kennedy
And it was like 245,000 words. And so I've been asked for my advice. You know, you don't always want to hear it, but I said, that sounds very long.

21:02.97
Jeffe Kennedy
And especially for a first book. And she replied, ah she was working with a writing partner and she said, yes, we hear that a lot, but we are confident that that length is needed, that everything in there is needed. And it's like, okay.

21:19.91
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, are you though? ah Is that misplaced confidence? So anyway, um I've gone long. And so on Monday, I'll tell you what I've ended up doing. I'm,

21:35.38
Jeffe Kennedy
I can't decide. it I think I'm going to work a little bit more on a rose in the mirror today. I don't know if I'm going to start in on those final chapters. My thought is is, is I want to go back and smooth from the beginning and then write that ending.

21:51.52
Jeffe Kennedy
There are a few things I need to weave in. So I'm thinking maybe I'll do that today. um and then on Sunday, going to switch over to strange familiar.

22:04.45
Jeffe Kennedy
finish that, get it revised, get it uploaded by the 27th, and then go back to a Rose in the Mirror and get that finished in time to deliver to Ali.

22:16.24
Jeffe Kennedy
It's my master plan. I believe it could work. Wish me luck. yeah All right. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and we'll talk to you all on Monday.

22:28.25
Jeffe Kennedy
You all take care. Bye-bye.