Bean Counters

Mmmm.  Beans.

I like beans.  Baked beans, refried beans, bean bags.  But that's not what I'm referring to here.  I'm talking about words.  Word count in a book can make the difference between short story and novel, novel and unbearable tome by a pretentious author.  So of course, I am very self-conscious of how many words I have written or am writing in any particular story.

As of yesterday, I had written 75,000 word in my current work.  Not a bad pile of beans.  Put them in a stuffed animal, and you'd have a good sized Beanie Baby.  What I've realized, however, is that word count only matters in college.  Yes.  It will help you judge where you are in a novel but only insofar as how many pages are behind you in an invisible book with an unknowable number of pages until the end.

All that matters is, how is your story?  Is it a good one?  Is it well told?  Is it well written?  Would you want to read it?  If the answer to these questions is yes, then the amount of words is irrelevant.  Before starting your project you likely know how many pages/words the final product will be and will only be distracted if you pay much attention to how many words you wrote in the past and how many you think you will write in the future.  Such thoughts can hinder the flow of your writing by making you think you should write more or less when what you would write under no restraints or word count demands would be exactly the perfect number of words.