16,338 Words

A simple Google search revealed to me today that the average modern novel has, depending upon your definition of modern and upon which of myriad answers you choose to believe, 50,000-200,00 words.

Granted, that's a big ball park. War and Peace, The Fountainhead, The Stand, all have many, many more. The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Rosencrantz and Gilderstern are Dead have many, many less. The page count of a 50,000 word paperback is about 126-150. 70,000 words seems to be a magic number to get to 200 pages, which, let's face it, is hardly a long book. Now, 250 pages and you've got yourself something. It feels meaty in your hand, but it isn't too intimidating for most readers. The public will feel they are getting their money's worth and not be too afraid to pick the thing up.

All this assumes people still buy physical books. I know they do, but in the three-and-a-half years since I worked at Barnes & Noble it is amazing to see the diminished inventory they have on hand. Right up front is the Nook stand where they will happily sell you one of many styles of their house brand readers. One can get the Amazon (whatever that is) version as well, if they are predisposed to just giving their money to terrorists. I have made use of my iPad to read and unsurprisingly, there is an app for both Nook and Kindle.

Point being, I shouldn't be so wrapped up in word count, or page count as it all seems to matter less and less since it all is the same size, weight and shape on an e-reading device.

But I am wrapped up in it. I bet you'd like to know why; and if you don't, you needn't have bothered to read this long, because it's all working up to this - I have been taking the little extra time I have had and started plugging away at my little work of fiction. As of today, I have an unpolished, sort of manic thing that is, by the storyboard in my head, about half done and Word says it is 16,338 words. My calculator says that is about 33% of a really small novel. But it's about 50% of what I think I have left to write. Double it and you get 32,676 words, which takes me on a bus straight past short storyville but drops me off short of novel country for wont of more fair.

Put another way, my less-than-brilliant, been done-to-death idea is too long to be a movie script, impossible to adapt for a stage play, and too short to be a novel. It's a novelette. Novelette is a term no one uses anymore. Because novelettes are stupid. My project is like caffeine free diet pop - a big fat glass of why bother.

Now, I suppose it could end up being longer. I haven't completely fleshed it all out yet. I am kind of banging it out, since I only have a vague idea of how it will end and I am sort of just letting it get there. Once I have a beginning and a middle and an end, maybe I will need some more supporting material or dialogue to bolster a storyline or scene. Maybe I have not included enough information to get from plot point to plot point and a reader who does not know how to read my mind might end up saying, "huh?".

Many authors talk about their intensive research and outlines that have back stories that never even make it in to the book, but they need them as inspiration to justify what the character does, and... huh? Why write a book, and then a book? If you are going to speak about your characters as literally alive, (can you turn a human character into an anthropomorphism? Discuss amongst yourselves), how can you so intensively predestine all that they will do and say?

I don't do it that way. My characters say what they say in the moment and that causes what is next to happen. What the hell do I know? I've never done this before!

This is a purely academic exercise, this fretting about the word count of my first attempt at long fiction. The only place it will ever be published on to a pdf on my thumb drive.

Someone who reads my blog, (and professes to like it), asked if I ever planned on packaging up some of the better posts (implying there are any at all), and making a book out of them. How am I going to find time to do that? I'm trying to write a book!

Some people just don't get it.