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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: RobJN on December 31, 2009, 09:35:50 PM

Title: Word Count!
Post by: RobJN on December 31, 2009, 09:35:50 PM
All right, from New Year to New Year's Eve, how many words have ya'll written, amongst anything you consider a "writing project" be it that Great American Novel™, your dissertation on World Peace, or... you know, boring school papers?

* Message board posts don't count! :-P

I was tallying for a blurb on Facebook, just to put something up for "What I Accomplished This Year," and was amazed when I got close to 250,000. Wow. I guess writing every day (or at least TRYING to) really does help.

Untitled (Jack and Beth's story): 106,000
Project Green-5: 62,000
Thorn's Chronicle: 75,120

Let's see if I can keep the momentum going into the new year.....
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: Starbeam on December 31, 2009, 11:10:13 PM
Total word count, no clue. But for my WiP, i'm guessing around 8-10,000. Didn't keep close track.
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: Blaze on December 31, 2009, 11:53:15 PM
Hey!  I post poetry to the message boards...  so I think that should count.  LOL.
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: RobJN on January 01, 2010, 12:10:53 AM
Hey!  I post poetry to the message boards...  so I think that should count.  LOL.

Very well, we'll make exceptions for poetry :-)
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: Blaze on January 01, 2010, 01:44:23 AM
Prose, poetry, essas, fil,k scrolls, documentation and RPG scenarios....  about 94000 to 100,000 words, plus or minus.  I wore the letters off of my keys in less than a year. 
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: KevinEvans on January 01, 2010, 07:40:14 AM
I dunno,
I got 52K in 18 days for NaNo..... (had to finish early or I would have missed Loscon...)
Regards,
Kevin
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: Blaze on January 01, 2010, 01:30:32 PM
Amazing to be able to do that much in a month!  Maybe if I found a desert Island with wifi...  LOL
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: Kali on January 01, 2010, 02:29:24 PM
I... I couldn't even guess.  It'd take hours to open up every document I wrote this year and get a word count on it, then add them up.  Hundreds of thousands, based on the sizes of a couple of them.
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: LizW65 on January 01, 2010, 11:48:50 PM
Hard to say--do rewrites count?  I did a full revision of my 126,000 word novel between February and August, and ended up cutting about 3000 words (plus making it actually readable!)  Plan on doing my third revision of that manuscript soon.  I also did about 60,000 words of a rough draft for NaNoWriMo, and am still working on that one.  I'm about 1/2 way through.

On a related topic, I got a lovely new laser printer for Xmas, and installed it on my laptop today. ;D
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: KevinEvans on January 02, 2010, 08:05:26 AM
Actually it is not that hard, to write 50 K in a month, you only need a little over 1667 words a day. That is about 7 pages, or about a third of a typical short story. ( or about 8 forum posts, Grin)

The biggest challenge for me is to quash my inner editor, and get the base story line down. Believe me the finished product rarely resembles the first draft.

Regards,
Kevin





Amazing to be able to do that much in a month!  Maybe if I found a desert Island with wifi...  LOL
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: Blaze on January 02, 2010, 09:14:52 AM
 ;) But you aren't letting me count any of my forum posts....  and actually my word count only includes stuff I would actually show to anyone. 

I'll bet I have deleted more words (formed into sentences and paragraphs) than most people!  LOL
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: meg_evonne on January 05, 2010, 02:28:11 AM
Thank you Rob, I really needed to pat myself on the back.  These don't count endless re-writes and editing, but the final work at this point.

62501  YA Book I   completed manuscript nine queries sent, 1 full read, 1 50 page request, and negs w/one out
59276  YA Book II  major re-write needed of the last eight and I have a week until class starts... arghh! Where I plan to start Book III if everyone thinks I should keep going with it or start something entirely different.  I hope they say the concept is great and keep going!
27141  Adult paranormal (stress reliever) that I jokingly call Demon Porn has gone from short story to four future novellas for 80,000 total.  I fiddle with it when I need a break from YA and want to write longer sentences and some words that are longer than nine letters  LOL! 

That's a whopping 148918 and I'll take great pride in that. 

(And no, you can't read my Demon Porn!)
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: RobJN on January 05, 2010, 02:38:07 AM

That's a whopping 148918 and I'll take great pride in that. 

W00t!

Congratulations, meg, and EVERYONE who's replied in the thread. I counted unreleased sections in Green-5, but didn't count the files I keep for each work which I call the "Cutting Room Floor." Partial ideas, false starts, places where a scene branches, and then the "unused" portions thereof.... I hang on to most of it.

Now, if I could just have a nickel for every time I hit the "delete" key.... (no crusty ol' black ones possessed by demons, please!)

Speaking of which....

Quote
(And no, you can't read my Demon Porn!)


I never get to have any fun! :P

Here's to another year full of word after word, page after page, whether for fun or for future publication. (wait, are those two things mutually exclusive...?)
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: meg_evonne on January 05, 2010, 02:56:24 AM
Thank you again Rob.  I did really need to do this.
Now, if I could just have a nickel for every time I hit the "delete" key.... (no crusty ol' black ones possessed by demons, please!)

Speaking of which....

I never get to have any fun! :P

Here's to another year full of word after word, page after page, whether for fun or for future publication. (wait, are those two things mutually exclusive...?)

Absolutely and wait!  OMG NO! You press the delete button????  I never, never delete.  Each WiP has a folder I name Past edits.  Everything goes into that. 

According to The Fiction Writer's Workshop by Novakovich, F Scott Fitzgerald says there are two types of writers putter-inners or taker-outers.  I do both and fall into a third catagory probably created by the era of the word processing in that I'm a "took it out and have to find it again to use in another spotter" type.  LOL
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: Blaze on January 05, 2010, 07:47:55 AM
OMG I delete with extreme prejudice.
Title: Re: Word Count!
Post by: meg_evonne on January 07, 2010, 05:35:51 PM
You know what I would find fascinating?  An MRI of a poet's brain vs a writer's brain.  I know they are both probably going to light up the creative side, but the location must be completely different with author & poet.  My poet side has to be so black that the rest of me fears stepping into it.  I'm just not wired that way. 

Now Blaze on the other hand must have a beautiful fully lit with wonderful color brain since she does both!