Word counts: a phrase that strikes utter apathy in the hearts of people everywhere. Well, most people. If you’re a writer or editor, you probably care (at least some) about word counts. They are a rough measure of the size of a piece of writing, and in shorter works (journal articles, short fiction, etc) they can be a measure of effort for use in paying writers. Typically book-length work is paid based on unit sales and/or other complicated algorithms so it matters less how many words something is once it reaches that scope. Now, determining what lengths qualify as “novel” versus, say, “novella” is a whole other discussion, but let’s focus on the fact that word counts are used to determine relative size and values for works that tend to be collected or anthologized.
Have you seen this Hemingwrite thing? Basically it’s a dedicated word processor with an typewriter design aesthetic but some modern technology touches like cloud-syncing and an e-Ink digital screen.
I’ll be honest, I think the thing is sexy as can be. I have a certain fetish for typewriters to begin with, so this preys directly upon that sensibility while neatly sidestepping the fact that, romanticism aside, writing on such a device would require a huge sacrifice in the convenience department. But I can’t lie and say it’s not alluring to be presented with the opportunity to have some of that nostalgic cake and digitize it, too.
But then I read the kickstarter page, and I realize this is a product that is being sold to fix a problem it can’t reasonably be expected to address. And it’s not the first product to take aim at the hapless writer this way, either. Continue reading →
I had cause to stop and take stock of my fiction writing in the past week not because some particular milestone had been reached (not that I would know the exact date of a milestone anyway) but because I’ve made some happy progress over the last couple of weeks. Having begun to feel as if I’m turning a corner on the creative desert that was the winter, I thought I’d further explore the kind of statistical trivia that my weird, detail-obsessed brain thrives on.
Bearing in mind that I began writing fiction in earnest roughly two years ago in the summer of 2011 (it was late summer, but who’s counting?), I did some very rough calculations and came to the following figure: 375,050. That is the approximate number of words of original fiction I’ve managed to wring from my brain in a couple of years. Now, the number there is a tad misleading for a couple of reasons. The first is that it represents a mixture of both “finished” works as well as a few in-progress items, plus some of one of the larger word count projects was done prior to the vague start date. The second is that it is missing a not-insignificant amount of work and effort. The best I can do is a wide ballpark figure of about 100,000 words worth of screenplay, graphic novel script, and abandoned projects. There are ways I could narrow those numbers down to something reliable enough to get within, say, +/- 5,000 words, but the effort required isn’t worthwhile for these purposes. There is also another probably 25K words worth of world-building for the graphic novel.
Caveats aside, it the takeaway here is that, give or take, I’ve written about half a million words in the pursuit of storytelling in the last couple of years.
Housekeeping
With the self-congratulatory milestone marking out of the way, I wanted to take a moment and set the stage for a new kind of post I’m going to try out. For lack of a better name I’m calling them “200 CCs” (CC in this case being the Roman numeral for 200 so I guess technically the title is “200 200” but like I said, lacking anything better…). There will be an associated tag. Basically these are going to be flash fictions of less than 200 words (or 200 words exactly). I’ll make an effort to post one per week. The purpose is to force me to work smaller, to set scenes with punchier, more evocative language and to permit experimentation.
There will be one going up later today and we’ll see if the Tuesday schedule sticks.
