I'm making my Friday blog post a day early because I won't be at a computer much tomorrow. We've got an appointment at the hospital to get Conor's test results back to see if they can tell us exactly what went wrong. Then in the evening we're going to a friend's wedding.
Sometimes I feel like I'm too concise in my writing. While the standard word count for an urban fantasy, whether adult or YA, is about 80,000 words, my final count for a first draft seems be staying around the 70,000 mark. I see other authors seemingly able to rattle off their drafts. Their big issue is working out what to take out to bring their ms down to a more manageable word count before querying, while more established authors get to publish ever-thicker novels.
My work is too long to be a novella, and for most non-fantasy fiction it's actually an appropriate length. It's just specifically urban fantasy that seems to be stuck with the flat word count target of 80,000.
Am I doing something wrong? Is there a danger that I'm getting to the point too quickly, or not filling my work with enough world-building, characterisation, or just plain old padding? Is it ever okay to pad out a work when you need an extra 5,000 words?