Who REALLY knows..?

by Tim
(Florida)

Sir,

Good afternoon.

Help me wrestle this please? I'm old and have time. A few quid and fewer worries.
I was always accused of being creative.
What to do in my autumn then?
So, I wrote this book. Several actually but the first couple were rubbish.

I'm no writer but had a go.
I like it. It's a good story.

Well defined characters with arcs, a plot and a sub plot, an inciting incident, tension filled gaps, a climax and surprise ending.
Ticks most boxes.

It should be reasonably well written. I had a classical education. English literature and English language were separate subjects when I was a lad...
At my English grammar school anyway.

So what's the problem?

Well, it's around 170k words.
A dear friend, a successful published writer with movie credits, says cut it by 100k words. (Don't want to argue with her...nor take up her valuable time nor abuse our friendship using her as a jump off))
Easy for her to say though.

I've been an entrepreneur all my life - I get the economics. So much paper, got to fit in the printers boxes, space on Barnes and Nobles shelves, bla - none of which leans 'creative'.

'cos I'm a newbie 100k words max.
Kind of reduces talent to a one size fits all doesn't it?

''Mr. King, this new book of yours, it's too long''
''Really? Well, you didn't say that about Duma Key. Or any of my other 300k word potboilers. I'll have a word with my agent, get another publisher...''

Sadly I don't have that leverage.

I can get it down so far - maybe to 130k words...but...
At some point detail lost through rampant editing compromises the story. That's just common sense, right?
Are you going to tell me it can be told in less than 100k words too?

Thanks for even reading this far!

Tim.