Every Word Counts in Word Counts

Our current WIP is going to be long. Very, very long. Like, probably too long.

We’ve come to this realization as we’re working. On the one hand, hey, a story is as many words long as it takes to tell. It’s not like some numbers are better than others for word count. On the other hand, we need to be reasonable. And because we really do want this book to fit in with the others in the series, there’s a practical upper limit which we’re almost certainly going to exceed.

So, having come to this realization, what did we change? Nothing. We’ve pressed onward, adding yet more words.

Are we demented? We are not. (Actually, we sorta might be, but not about this.) Our goal is to produce a complete draft at a consistent level of pacing and detail, which will put us in a good position for editing. Were we to make adjustments on the fly in hopes of dialing in the proper word density for the finished (edited) book, well, we’d be off by whatever amount anyway and now the remainder of this draft would be all second-guessy and have a different flavor from what we’ve already done.

There might not be one right number of words for books in general , but there’s an optimal length for each book individually. We know we’ll end up cutting this one down, which isn’t going to be fun sometimes. Thing is, it’s not just quantity. We want to make sure that all the right words go into that final number, and one of the best ways to do that is to let the words flow at this stage. Which means, we need to obsess a lot less about the word count. And boy, that is one thing we do enjoy obsessing over.

Having a writing partner means there’s someone to strategize with and help keep you on course when it counts.