[The Curious Orange]

While there are first time writers writing long debut novels, they do tend to be the exception rather than the rule. You stand a better chance writing fantasy, to be honest, because long does tend to be the staple length for the genre.

I wrote the first draft of my novel without really considering how long it would be. The first draft came in at 265K words. Yeah, it knocked me back, too.

The second draft was 204K words. I'm trying to get it down to under 180K without ripping out the heart of the story. Only when it's about that length would I even consider submitting it. Deleting entire scenes is so much harder than writing them in the first place...

So my advice would be -

1. Only consider splitting it in two if the first half will stand up as a book in it's own right, ie: with a beginning, a middle and an end. If it doesn't have a definitive end, consider writing an ending, of sorts, purely to wrap the first book up, while leaving the major plot threads hanging for book two. Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb is a good example of this. The bulk of the book is set up for the trilogy, with a short mini-plot tacked on the end to give book one a definite close.

2. Edit it. Be brutal with your prose, and shorten the thing. You might actually improve the finished product and increase it's chances of publication.