Word Counts Are The Goddamn Bane of My Existence

Well, expanding exposition is proving to not be that hard, but it's still probably not gonna get me there. Unless I invent a lot of fun shit to happen in the few years Brenna spends in college offscreen, I'll probably top out again at 60,000 words. I fear even that is optimistic.

I really am torn. The only way to sell a 60,000 word novel to a publisher as a standalone tome is as a young adult novel and I really don't want to go that route. 70,000 is passable as a novel but they still get squinchy up to 80,000. Which is why 80,000 was the goal. I've been told that trying to hit a word count seems like a waste of time but everything I've read indicates that word count really is of serious importance. Apparently there's a trend toward shorter novels but how far do I really want to push that? And yet is it worth it to make the book suck just to make it longer?

I don't know. These are the issues plaguing me today. Now granted, none of this applies to someone like Stephen King. Stephen King can write whatever the fuck he wants and someone will publish it. He's an established author with a loyal, established readership who will automatically buy anything he puts out. But for a frame of reference, I remember Cather in the Rye seeming short, and it's 73,404 words. Slaughterhouse Five is less than 50,000, as is Fahrenheit 451, so I guess I have that, but both of those authors were established when they wrote these books and they're less novels-for-the-sake-of-a-story and more novels-for-the-sake-of-a-statement (at least that's my understanding -- I've never read Slaughterhouse Five. Although I want to).

One trick I can pull is to calculate my word count by the page number formula: 250p = w where p is the number of pages and w is the word count. Using that right now, I'm at 58,250 words. I find this much more comfortable. And, from what I see, both methods (the formula and just using the word count tool) are equally accepted and no one will criticize you for being even 10,000 words off your actual count because you used the formula. The logic goes that the formula is accepted because a 300 page novel with a lot of snappy dialogue is going to have a lot fewer words than a 300 page books with long, descriptive paragraphs. It's used to calculate spacing, which is a valid concern, and indeed the reason why word count is such a big deal. Plenty of readers will avoid a book solely because it looks too long or too short.

I think I'm gonna carry through and expand all the exposition that can be easily expanded, write "THE END" at the bottom, save it, then delete "THE END" and click Save As and put "brennaWIP" (the current file name is "brenna"). I'll send out queries on the short version, and keep working to extend it for when everyone says no. I might be the exception and my story and writing will break through my puny word count and someone will pick it up. However, as He's Just Not That Into You tells us, we can't count on being the exception. We have to count on being the rule.