Wordcount!

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Thanks, Cyclone and King. Your answers are very helpful. I was worried about the whole 2k a day being mush thing, but I suppose mush on the table beats War and Peace in the brain anyday.

If it works for you, fine.  There are people for whom writing down the Wrong Thing stops them ever being able to find the Right Thing.  Both valid ways to be writers, but it's a good idea to know which is true for you.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I do that quite a bit myself, only since I'm working on a non-fiction book, the story is already pretty much laid out. It's just a matter of delivering it in an interesting and readable way.

I very rarely do things out of order, and if so, not very, because my characters  almost always find some way of surprising me in the middle of every scene, even if only a small one, which would mess later things up if I had already written them.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

From what I've read, 80,000 words is typical for a normal novel, but sci-fi and fantasy gets more slack because you're creating a world.  120,000 seems to be the cap for an introductory spec fic piece, though there are always exceptions.

It's worth noting that up to about 2000 or so, there was a perception that fat fantasy novels in particular sold better than thin fantasy novels.  At some point around then Borders basically imposed a cap on how much they were willing to sell a genre hardback for, which meant that a fair number of what were written as 120kword novels have been split in two for since - I know this is true of the last voume of Peter Watts' Rifters trilogy, and of Stross' Merchant Princes books, the first two of which are more a single book with two additional superfluous bits of cardboard than almost anything else I have ever read.

[RMatthewWare]

It's worth noting that up to about 2000 or so, there was a perception that fat fantasy novels in particular sold better than thin fantasy novels.  At some point around then Borders basically imposed a cap on how much they were willing to sell a genre hardback for, which meant that a fair number of what were written as 120kword novels have been split in two for since - I know this is true of the last voume of Peter Watts' Rifters trilogy, and of Stross' Merchant Princes books, the first two of which are more a single book with two additional superfluous bits of cardboard than almost anything else I have ever read.

I think that's retarded.  A book written at 120,000 words is meant to be 120,000 words.  If you split it up, I think you're jerking around the reader.  No one wants to read half a book.  Hasn't Harry Potter shown us that long books are fine, if they're good enough?

But, you know, it's Barnes and Nobles and Borders (and maybe Amazon) that decide most of what is getting published.  If they don't sell it, then publishers aren't going to want to publish it. 

Matt

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

If it works for you, fine.  There are people for whom writing down the Wrong Thing stops them ever being able to find the Right Thing.  Both valid ways to be writers, but it's a good idea to know which is true for you.

I can see your point. AND... Friday, with giving myself permission to write 2000 words after tying my inner critic up in a dark closet, I was able to actually get 2012 words on screen that weren't there before. Of course, the little booger kept screaming in the distance, "that sucks, you hack!" but I don't care. I have new words!

Next time though, I'll remember the duct tape for his nasty little butt. I mean mouth.

In unrelated news.... I spent 10 hours Saturday standing in line to audition for Deal or No Deal.

[Dom]

Let's see...early december, I was at 43,000.  Early May I'm at 51,000.  So, 8000 words in 6 months.  Man, I suck.  A thousand words a month.

I guess I do have 2 fanfics too I've been tossing out, one at 7227 words at the moment, one at 6566.  So if you count that I've done 21,793 words in 6 months.  Plus the snippits of other brewing stories.  If I'm being generous to myself, I could say 3000+ words a month.  Which still sucks.

::feels bummed now she's done the math::

[skaoi]

Hmmm....my co-author and i seem to have an issue with verbosity.  We're at chapter 25, passing 120K words with no sign of stopping any time soon.  Lots of editing to do, but, to tell the truth, I only see the editing process adding to the count.

[recentcoin]

As the aforementioned co-author, I can tell you that I have always been verbose.  It takes a lot of words to create an accurate mental picture for someone else, so I spend a lot of words creating mood and giving descriptions.  I think that this is especially important in a fantasy setting, since there are no preconceived notions.  If I say "grocery store", you get an immediate mental image of aisles, shopping carts, produce section, the smell of coffee from the coffee aisle, the horrid fluorescent lighting, etc.  There isn't a lot of description required for you to understand "grocery store".  But I say, "Drow campsite" and you don't necessarily know what a drow is, do you have any idea of what that looks likes?  smells like?  what the "vibe" is like?  No, you do not and in order to make a reader understand that, you have to explain that to them. 

One of my central characters is a tiefling.  He's an escaped slave who's grandfather was a very powerful demon.  I go to a fair amount of trouble to show his strengths, his weaknesses, and his trials with his own very real "inner demon".  I think that's more important to explaining to the unfamiliar what a tiefling is than waving a drawing at them and saying "demon".  Now, the question becomes how to do this in a few words and the short answer is that you can't.  It takes words on the paper.  If you leave too many blanks, you don't really tell the whole story.  My problem is that character creation comes easily to me.  Even my background characters have elaborate back stories.  One of my background characters is a housekeeper.  Her back story is almost as elaborate as the main PC's even though I've not written it down. 

[Cyclone Jack]

The first/rough draft of my novel is DONE! *pops champagne!*

It clocks in at just over 93,000 words. I'm estimating that second and third drafts will add a good 35,000-40,000 to it. But the skeleton and all the major scenes are there.

To be honest, I'm absolutely flabbergasted at how the thing ended. I'm happy that there is no set up for any sort of sequel, though. All through the last 20 k I was afraid my brain was going to take the easy path and leave an out. Nope.

Forcing myself to bang out 2000 or more words a day focused on a single story was an interesting experience and it taught me a lot about how my brain worked:

My brain is a sneaky, seditious, rebellious asshole.

For example, three times in the writing process I found myself thousands of words into completely unrelated short fiction. I generally didn't realize this until I was past the point of no return. While this annoyed me by slowing the novel-writing down, I must admit that all three stories are pretty damn good. They're also things I would never have written conciously and without the nebulous atmosphere of the novel in progress and its many strange themes and characters.

The longest (and best, IMO) veers scarily close to erotic fantasy. It would be erotic fantasy in fact, if not for the fact that I refuse to write sex scenes. Instead, The Queen Of Summer is something much better: a tale of loyalty, a paen to the wild summers of my youth, and a tribute to young people defying authority in an organic, deeply felt, utterly unplanned manner. Stylistically, it may be the best thing I've ever written.

The other two are more traditional horror stories. While I consider both clever, they'll be tossed to the back of the pile for polishing and tweaking.

While I may never conciously sit down to write another novel (the process, for the most part, was maddening. The continuity alone is going to take me months to sort out. Thankfully, I'll have help with that. ), I might jump into the process again just for the framework to write more short fiction.

[Tasmin21]

Congrats on finishing!

[RMatthewWare]

My latest version is 113,500

Matt

[Cyclone Jack]

Congrats on finishing!

Thanks!

[meg_evonne]

Currently about 50,000 on a first "shitty" draft.  Congrats on finishing Cyclone Jack!  Have you tried an outline to keep on track or do you perfer the easy flow of not having one?  Meg

[Cyclone Jack]

Currently about 50,000 on a first "shitty" draft.  Congrats on finishing Cyclone Jack!  Have you tried an outline to keep on track or do you perfer the easy flow of not having one?  Meg

This is a pretty 'shitty' draft itself, Meg. Vast sections have no dialouge, because dialouge slows me down more than anything else.

On the rare occasions I have used an outline it resembled a long, rambling note to myself more than a formal structure.

[Wolfhowls]

Right now all my stories are in my head...only a few have made it to paper...