The word count of published novels was something I became obsessed with when I first started writing. I was paranoid that if the word count of my stories wasn’t within a specific range, it wouldn’t be suitable for the genre and age-range I was writing for. While this loosely holds true, I have come to realise that I don’t really care about how long other people’s books are, and barely care about the length of my own.
The truth is that the word count of the book should be enough to tell your story. And I mean that in the fullest sense in that it must be long enough to tell the story you have created, but not so long it contains additional sections/pages/chapters that do nothing to enhance it.
The other thing I worried about was how long I should take to write my stories. There’s lots of advice on this, and most of it you can probably ignore. Some of the worst advice you can read when you’re starting on your author journey is that from professional authors who have the time to devote to writing the rest of us don’t have because we’re effectively taking up a hobby alongside our work and family commitments. Sure, it would be great if I could write every day, but I’ve been writing stories since I was 18, so I know that will never happen. Sometimes I’ll write five times a week, sometimes I won’t write for months. That’s just how it goes.
Write what you want when you can, and don’t worry too much about what everyone else does.
Saying that, I will now tell you what I do. This isn’t so you can copy me, but more to give you confidence that some authors (me!) are a little slow at writing their books. Not everyone writes this way, and there are many self-published authors who write multiple books a year. Most of these books are politely referred to as romanticy, though my wife calls them “supernatural trash porn” which I feel sums them up better – she is a fan of these books, I should add.
Whatever you write, work to your own timeline. Write what you want when you feel like you’re in the mood to write. If you’re not in the mood to write, don’t write as it’ll probably be rubbish anyway and you’ll end up having to delete it all. Take a month to write your book or take ten years, it really doesn’t matter as long as you are left with something you’re proud of.
Word count
I’ve said before that the word counts of other books are unimportant, but because I like sharing data in these blogs, I will tell you mine:
- The Keeper of Portals – 89,912 words
- The Archivist – 102,360 words
- The Girl Who Sold Time – 66,882 words
Writing daily
Whatever your word count goal may be (if you even have one), you’ll never reach it unless you sit down and write. Now I’ve already said I’m not a big believer in writing every day, as I don’t think that’s achievable unless you write full time.
When it comes to daily writing goals on the days I find the time to write, I will usually manage between 500 and 1,000 words. Typically, this will be between 19:00 and 21:00. Any earlier than that, and I’m spending time with my children, and any later I find myself gravitating towards the sofa to read someone else’s book.
While I have a rough idea of how much I want to write, I never set a goal, both in terms of number of words I must write in an evening or number of words I must complete in a set time period (e.g. a month). As much as possible, I try to write organically and believe the story will be finished when it’s finished.
How many drafts?
Another question that plagued me when I first started writing was How many drafts do I need? More than one, surely, but after that, I really had no idea. If I’m honest, I still don’t. It’s hard to tell when a book is finished, and I expect that most writers would keep on working on their manuscript ad infinitum. For me, it’s the desire to hold the physical book in my hands that tells me it’s time to stop editing and start the publication process. When I get that feeling, I do everything I can to get the book into the best possible state it can be in. This involves professional editing, which I’ll cover in a separate blog.
So how many drafts did I write of my books? Firstly, it’s difficult to constitute what a separate draft is. If I change only one word, is the changed manuscript a new draft? Obviously, that would be a no, but the point I’m making is that there is no rule (at least that I follow) which definitively separates one draft from the other. The difference between some drafts is huge, while for others, it is only a handful of changes. However, one thing that separates them for me is that someone (me, an editor or a beta reader) must have read through the entire manuscript.
Number of drafts
- The Keeper of Portals – 13
- The Archivist – 11
- The Girl Who Sold Time – 10
What’s also interesting to see is the time between the drafts and how the total word count changes.
For The Keeper of Portals, the word count steadily reduced over time from first draft to final. The Archivist, however, took a rather dramatic increase in the word count. This is because I did not feel that the early version of the story was quite right, so I ended up completely re-writing the manuscript for the fourth draft and ended up with something much longer (and better).
For The Girl Who Sold Time there is a dramatic increase in the word count as later drafts added new elements to the story. The reason for the massive reduction in word count towards the end was because the line edit (completed by Lucy Courtenay – Cornerstones) hugely thinned out the manuscript, but without removing the key elements of the plot.
Time to create the book
I’ll end this blog with a graph that displays how long it took me to create each book from starting the first draft all the way to the publication date. There is missing time at the start, before I even begin to write the first draft where I’m coming up with idea and making notes, but it’s difficult to record that time, so I’ve left it off.
Signing off
And there you have it. Hopefully you’ve found something in this blog useful or, more likely, reassuring. Like I said before, writing isn’t about reaching goals, its about creating something you can be proud of.
