{"id":4212,"date":"2026-06-14T02:15:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T06:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/?p=4212"},"modified":"2026-06-18T01:35:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:35:04","slug":"in-bloom-fifth-edit-complete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/?p=4212","title":{"rendered":"In Bloom Fifth Edit Complete"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll be honest here. I know I write long books. And my attitude toward it is somewhere smack dab in the middle of “I know it’s my responsibility to be less of a windbag” and “some stories are just plus size and there’s nothing I can do about it.”<\/p>\n

I have put in the work. This book’s first draft<\/a> was\u00a0197,664 words.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First edit<\/a> took it down to 159,238<\/strong>. I lost nearly 40,000 words through some hard choices about digressions, details, sub-plots, and worldbuilding that didn’t add enough to the story to justify the bloat.<\/p>\n

Second edit<\/a> took it down to 140,998<\/strong> words. Nearly another 10,000 lost. I trimmed as I made a strange backwards outline, reducing the story to bullet points and main ideas so I could hit it hard in the next edit.<\/p>\n

Third edit<\/a> took it down to 133,069<\/strong> words. I applied what I learned in the outline to find points that weren’t necessary, details that could be refined, character interactions that could be cut or streamlined. I backed way off conversations that didn’t contain vital information (though I really, really missed those character-building moments) and I reconfigured many elements. But I was convinced I could still slim it down.<\/p>\n

Fourth edit<\/a>. 128,937<\/strong> words. While I was thrilled to have a word count in the 120s, that still just looks like a scary number no matter how far I’d come. And unfortunately, this was the beta-reader stage and some of my feedback suggested they wanted\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>exposition. I’d stripped too much flesh off the bone. I did end up editing it to address the lack and gained another 3,000 words here. So I underwent drastic measures.<\/p>\n

I decided I wanted to aim between 125,000 (tops) and 120,000 (ideal). So I made a chart, with proportional calculations for how many words I’d need to reach the goal per chapter, and got to work. Yes. I was so desperate to lose words that I did math.<\/p>\n

The fifth edit was completed at 122,470 words.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s the chart tracking my progress. (It didn’t end up with this exact word count because there have been minor tweaks since completing the edit.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I somehow lost another 6,000 words without sacrificing anything huge. Only a few of the cuts were bleeding (though I’m wincing thinking about it).<\/p>\n

And by objective standards of the industry? This is\u00a0still a long book<\/strong>. I have unwritten a book and a half and I still have a plus-size book.<\/p>\n

I am going to have to live with it. And so will the world.<\/p>\n

Next stop, querying. Here we go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll be honest here. I know I write long books. And my attitude toward it is somewhere smack dab in the middle of “I know it’s my responsibility to be less of a windbag” and “some stories are just plus size and there’s nothing I can do about it.” I have put in the work. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,5,6,10],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-4212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-news","category-novels","category-querying","tag-in-bloom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4214,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4212\/revisions\/4214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}