Breakthrough! (I’m at 58,536 words so no, the breakthrough isn’t in my word count. But you build a novel one word at a time, no matter how painful and slow the words are.) I’m at the point in my WIP where I learned something new about my main character. This is what I love about writing, no matter how much you outline, your characters will still jump off the page and tell you something new. Guess what she wanted to tell me? Her name! She wasn’t feeling the name I gave her, said it was too boring and that it wasn’t quite ‘her’ . “Who are you to tell me what your name is? I created you and the name I gave you was just fine.” “If you’re going for ‘fine’ then I’ll keep the name. Silly me, I thought you were going for ‘great’.” (What can I say, the girl’s got spunk.) So I did as I was told and changed her name.
I’ve talked a lot about word count on my blog lately. Word count, word count, word count. “How many words can I crank out in a day without killing myself?” That’s the question I ask myself most mornings.
Not long ago, word count was the last thing I was worried about. When I wrote Six O’clock I was really wet behind the ears about the business side of writing. I was focused on the craft, and how I could make my novel better. Now, because I have (a little bit) more knowledge of the business side, it seems that’s all I’m worried about as I write. What does the industry say that a standard women’s fiction novel is? About 80,000 to 100,000 words. So I find myself fascinated by the word count meter at the bottom of the page, constantly watching it to see when it’ll reach a certain number. And then topping it. On and on I go until I type the best part of all: THE END. I’m not focusing on what’s more important, my novel. How are my characters growing? Are they interesting enough that my readers will turn the page? Will readers care about them?
I know that all first drafts are pretty bad, and it’s important that I get the words down to revise them. But like my editor once told me, “Don’t write words just to write words.”
Am I guilty of that? I hope not. But as I hit the final stretch of my novel I plan to worry less about word count and more about the quality of my novel.
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