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.

Milestone

Not to be confused with gallstones or kidney stones.  No.  I'm talking about an achievement, a mile marker in the current project.  I have reached, and now surpassed 50,000 words.  That's right, 50 G's.  Normally 50 G's in one place would sound like a recipe for disaster, the chances of gang violence escalating with each additional gangster.  But here, in this instance, 50 G's is just right.  It's a happy medium between how many words I will ultimately write in my current novel and the place where I started, an idea and a single sentence.

On until the end  I shall go, typing away, trying to keep up with the current goal of 2,000 word per day.  And, when it's over, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

Tortoise and the Hare

I'm pumping out 2,000 words of pure literary weight a day now (probably 2,000 lbs of crap but still literary crap).  It seems that the faster I write, the faster I want to write.  I know that I could finish every project with slow and steady, but I like to get to the finish.  That way I can start on the rewrites and editing and get on to the next project.

Literary Defecation

Is it better to put words out onto the page without a thought to what you are saying other than you are telling a story about X, or is it better to think about the words you use?  I'd be curious to see what other writers think of the subject.  My gut tells me that about half would say that you should just write whatever shit comes into your head and then fix on rewrite, and the others would say you still have to put some thought into the words or you'll end up trying to wrap a bow on the terd you spent half of the year squeezing out.

Today, I'd say I'm in the former group, squeezing out nuggets to polish in the future.