Kieran Mulvaney

My book deadline is one week from today. Last night I went to bed feeling moderately certain that I would at least be OK on quantity, if not the quality - I reckoned I could deliver the entire manuscript, but I wasn't confident that the most recently and hurriedly written chapters would be of sufficient quality. Now, it seems I have miscalculated and even the quantity may not be sufficient. Oh, I'll submit a completed manuscript, but I've miscalculated the usefulness of its length. I reckon it will come in at a shade over 60,000 words, which I had figured would be approximately a 240-page book - not by any means lengthy, quite slim in fact, but a good size for what is a "reader", a book which relies on the writing as much as on the subject matter. But now my editor tells me that 60,000 words equals a 160 page book. Now THAT'S slim. But I've been writing to what has felt like the natural length. Oh well, we'll see, I guess. I'm going to keep on writing and submit what I can submit, and we'll take it from there ...