Word Count Creep

Writing a book can be is a daunting task. Depending on your goal, you have anywhere between 50,000 to 400,000 words to type when crossing the threshold of your journey (hopefully you have the decency to constrain your prose to a length not too much higher than that). It's easy at any step in the process to lose momentum and become swamped. I want to talk about some of the writing cairns and how to get past them.

Initial Word Count Goal

I'm a numbers-oriented person. I like to have a goal in mind when embarking on most any endeavor. I think it's important for any writer to have a ballpark on their total word count. Some people may find this irrelevant and take care of it in editing, but I often prefer pre-editing over post-editing. Anything I can do to reduce work on the tail end is beneficial.

The way that I got a ballpark for my first book was precisely by looking up word counts of novels that I had read. Out of interest, here's a list of some popular book word counts. Another thing I took into account was the industry recommendations. Here's a page with a good meter.

Important also is whether you are debuting or returning to the scene. When people pick up a Dan Brown book they think, "I've read/heard of his books. I'll give this one a shot." When people see a Benny Hinrichs novel they think, "Cover's not terrible. I wonder if he's related to Jimmy Hendrix." Two different reactions. Reading a novel takes time (probably at least 10 hours). You have to convince people that your words are worth that time investment, and most people will shy away from a thick, bludgeoning tome from an unknown author.

Of interest: I wanted my first book to be somewhere between 90,000 to 105,000 words long. It turned out to be 101,000. I only achieved that by outlining and estimating.

Progress Spurs Progress

Another driving principle is that progress inspires progress. It takes hundreds of small victories to write 100,000 words. I keep a spreadsheet of my chapter word count. Every time I finish a chapter, I note the date and length along with a running total. Here's the spreadsheet of my word counts for Schools of Thought. The first time you hit 1,000 words, you think, "Wow, that wasn't all that bad. I can do that a few more times." Pretty soon you've laid out 5,000. Then 10, 20, 50, 100. Knowing that you've already accomplished something will drive you to accomplish something else.

You should find a progress monitoring method that jives with you. I do word count by chapters. Another idea is progress by event or scene (like you're shooting a movie). For that you need to have a pretty good outline.

Working Word Count Goal

Another trick of the trade that helps me immensely is a working word quota. That is, in x amount of time I will produce y number of words. My current working word quota is 2500/week. I like to use the week increment rather than day or month because it gives me enough time to do it without giving me too much time to do it.

Parkinson's law states that work will expand to fill time available for its completion. If I saw that I'll do 2500 words in a week, I may do all those on Saturday, but it gets done. If I say I'm going to do 500 words a day, I have a higher possibility of missing that goal due to other obligations. That will lead to writing depression and will encourage me to miss future goals. If I say I'm going to do 12,000 words a month, I'll inevitably go a whole week or two without writing anything. Suddenly I have to write 6,000 words a week  for two weeks straight. It's too onerous. Just as progress incites further progress, failure incites further failure. Thus my 2500/week.

Conclusion

Small victories win large wars. Set realistic goals and meet them! I'd like to add here that outlining will help everything. Maybe I say this because I'm not as much of a discovery writer, but I truly believe it. If I already know what's going to happen in a chapter, it's so much easier to write. Same holds true for a book. If you know where you're going, it'll be easier to get there.

Oneironauts Book Proof

Today something beautiful happened. Almost a week delayed (which may have been due to me inputting the wrong ZIP code), the proof of my book The Oneironauts: Schools of Thought peeked its head through the mail slot. Bless that UPS guy. Here's what the copy looks like.

It just amazes me how you can just open it up and read what you've written. The book is a remarkable invention! Although I did decide that I want the pages to be cream instead of white.

There were a few hiccups with the lineup. The 'R' got cut off, and the spine image is bleeding over onto the cover. I redid some stuff then uploaded a new cover.

Luckily there's a lion consellated on the back. That came free with the package.

The line spacers that I put in were somewhat pixelated, so I went back and replaced them with 2-line drop down starting letters. If you know what I mean. I realized that I don't have the know-how to make this particular aspect work. I also added an author bio right at the end in case anyone that buys it doesn't know me personally ;)

You may have noticed that the cover is different than the one previously posted. Well, I realized that I had made a pitifully small cover (at 72 dpi). They recommend/require that your cover be at least 300 dpi, so I started from ground zero and built up an entirely new cover. I also designed a full wrap instead of just a front. It was tricksy getting the spine lined up, I'll tell ya.

I don't know, what do you think? Disregarding the minor blemishes, does it look like something that would catch your eye in a bookstore (including online)? I hope so. I'll also have you know that I am working on the second book (progress over in the side bar), but it's hard while pursuing a physics degree.

The price will be $13.99 on Amazon once I approve the final copy. I wanted to make it lower, but the minimum price Amazon would allow is $13.10, so I rounded it up to a consumer-friendly value. Link will follow in a week or two.