Too Many Words

Ugh, so I've just discovered something about my WIP. I'm halfway through it word-count wise, but not halfway through plot-wise, which means when it comes time to edit I am going to have to cut out a lot. I'm trying to tell myself that this is a good problem to have because at least the story is flowing and I'm not worried about it not being long enough (which was an original concern with the novel I'm currently querying, and I actually had to add about twenty pages to that in the second draft). I also have an idea of which scenes are extraneous and can go, but a lot of those scenes reveal things about the main character and side characters, so it will be tough to edit. Basically, the novel I'm querying now is 78,000 words, which is good for the young adult market (which agents suggest, for a first novel, should be 60,000-80,000 words). Right now, I see this book hitting the 90,000 word mark if not higher. To be safe, I really don't want it to be more than 85,000 words, and to get it down to 80,000 would be even better.

It's going to be tough, but it's actually a more comforting problem than not having enough plot.

On a side note, my hubby and I watched Paranormal Activity for the first time the other night, which was a lot scarier than I though it was going to be. At first, it just looks like a really badly acted home movie, but as the plot progresses it gets better. Even though there were moments that freaked me out, I was able to fall asleep just fine. That is, until my computer mysteriously turned itself on at 3 in the morning!!! Weird, right? Okay, so it's not that weird since there are a billion explanations and most likely it was just doing an update or something, but after seeing that movie it was a little freaky.