{"id":5933,"date":"2011-06-20T03:37:43","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T08:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2011\/06\/20\/a-merlin-s-blade-victory\/"},"modified":"2011-06-20T03:37:43","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T08:37:43","slug":"a-merlin-s-blade-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2011\/06\/20\/a-merlin-s-blade-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"A Merlin&#8217;s Blade Victory!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"goright\"  src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.EpicTales.org\/images\/Robert\/MB_FrontCover.jpg?w=280\" alt=\"MERLIN'S BLADE\" title=\"MERLIN'S BLADE\" \/>I feel like shouting as Theoden, King of Rohan, did: <strong>VICTORY!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Three years to the day<\/strong> of finishing draft #1 of MERLIN&#8217;S BLADE, I have successfully cut the book down to 105,000 words!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Three years ago it was 154,000 words long<\/strong>, so the last twelve drafts have been quite a process of improving the novel and whittling it down to its most essential and important best. <\/p>\n<p><strong>And each time<\/strong> I think I can cut no further, I find a way, painful though it is. And MERLIN&#8217;S BLADE is a better book, by far, than it ever was.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why am I trying to get my book cut down to near 100,000 words?<\/strong>  The reason is that most of the major Christian publishers hold that word count as a close limit on books they will publish. <\/p>\n<p><strong>If they go above that by much<\/strong>, they won&#8217;t make as much profit on the book.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>And with the current economy<\/strong> such that it is, profitability is the difference between bankruptcy and many more years of service and ministry.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do I know that this limit exists?<\/strong>  I have made it a point to talk to agents and authors to verify it. <\/p>\n<p><strong>No, I didn&#8217;t get to exactly 100,000 words<\/strong>, but I think I&#8217;m close enough to make the book much more enticing to a publisher. Could I cut more? Probably. But I&#8217;ll need more inspiration than I have now to accomplish it. Also, at this point a publisher could easily fiddle with the font and margins to make it fit.<\/p>\n<p>Views: 30<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nI feel like shouting as Theoden, King of Rohan, did: VICTORY!!! Three years to the day of finishing draft #1&hellip;\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2011\/06\/20\/a-merlin-s-blade-victory\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;A Merlin&#8217;s Blade Victory!&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,14,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-merlin-spiral","category-1-merlins-blade","category-progress-reports","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MB_FrontCover14.jpg?fit=800%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1xH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}