Mathematical inclinations: why the word count is the writer’s favorite measuring device
Obsession is a fragrance by Calvin Klein, certainly. It also spurred an iconic commercial in the 1990s. Obsession happens to also be a familiar feeling and characteristic of writers, or artists of any kind. As a writer I know I'm not alone in a special math-oriented obsession – the word count.Why the word count? Why not page count? Or better yet hours put in on a given day during a writing session? Maybe because it's just so easy to highlight the prose you've been toiling away on for three hours and 54 minutes and with a few clicks, see your productivity measured clearly in the Tools function of any word processing program.Also, page counts in a word processing application don't translate one-to-one to a printed published real life book that you can touch, feel, smell, and swoon over.Hence, the word count.I've read so many articles over the last three years of the ideal word count for novels and short stories. There is a lot of guidance out there, and you should take it! I know I did. There are exceptions to every rule, but guess what? I never said it was a hard and fast rule. I said that magical word guidance. A comparative stick to size up your own work to see how the industry and those audacious and awesome writers before you did it.This data-driven, graph-laden bible of short story word counts on John Fox's site was exciting to come across way back when. OK, maybe it was only a year or so ago but regardless, I refer to it often. Especially as the last six months have held some sort of short story elixir that's driven me to write and complete four works of short fiction and fiddle with ideas for over eight other stories (and counting!).Seeing a visual representation of well-regarded short stories by familiar names (ahem, Hemingway, Bradbury, Munro and more) is like a reassurance that there is no firm rule but rather a range of word count, of writing quantity, that has been accepted by the literary world and the reading world at large.So, what's at the heart of the importance of word count? I really like the way this Blake Atwood describes it in The Write Life blog, in his article, "A Word Count Guide for 18 Book Genres, Including Fiction and Non-Fiction."
"Word count matters because every book, regardless of genre, has an inherent contract with the reader. But that contract is dependent upon the book’s genre." -Blake Atwood
For me, personally, I find word counts reassuring. I happen to be the type of writer that can sit down and bang out 2,000 words in a few hours. Listen, I'm not here to toot my own horn, just to share that I've finally gotten over the existential dread of self-editing as I write and agonizing over every word and sentence. I've arrived at a zen-sort of understanding that just having a block of words, a story of sorts, to work with is the first big hurdle to overcome. The first draft isn't the hard part.A friend of mine (writer Nicolas DiDomizio) described this process in a delightful metaphor. The first draft is blowing apart the boulder from the mountain. Then comes the very fun, long, arduous process of shaping, grinding, sculpting that boulder into something beautiful, recognizable and relatable. Of course, I added a few more adjectives than he would, but nonetheless, I believe in what he said wholeheartedly.Having a macro understanding of what you're working with – whether it's a 5,000-word short story draft or the rough 87,000-word novel manuscript that came spewing out of you – helps to shape our understanding of the work ahead. Knowing that you've written 150,000 words and that mainstream, published novels rarely exceed 90-100K on the longer end, will help you have a tangible understanding of how much you need to edit. And that, my friends, will offer just a touch more insight into what exactly you can spare.Knowing that you want to strive to be economical with your words and having a word count guide to aim for, will reign you in while also unleashing your creativity.There's no reason that structure should hamper ingenuity.