Saturday, September 12, 2009

Word up, homey

Sorry for no blog post yesterday. When you're a sports reporter, and it's September, Fridays can be a little wacky.

Anyway....

I hit the 40,000 word mark yesterday with the novel, and that got me to thinkin' again. How many words is enough? How many words are too many? Not enough?

Well, not enough words is easy. If you're story's not done yet, you probably don't have enough words. If your story's done, and it's not very many words, you probably don't have a novel. Maybe it's a short story or novella, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Too much is probably around six figures. I've read that unpublished authors that are trying to submit a novel over 100,000 words will get shot down faster than a bald 40-year-old at a singles bar. So save your War and Peace until you've got a couple advance checks under your belt.

As for me, I'm probably around halfway or just past halfway finished. I feel like there are still things I need to do, but I also feel like I'm coming out of the woods instead of going in. I don't know.

Either way, I'm at the point where this thing seems real -- like it's actually going to get finished somewhere in the near future. Another month of 1,000 words per day, and I'm sitting at 70,000 words. That doesn't seem like that much time at all.

Maybe this is something I can actually do.

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