I’ve been taking a hard look at the story I intended to work up into a novel, and I think it’s much better suited for short story form (~ 10,000 words). I have about 12,000 words down already (don’t freak out – most of it was written before I joined Write-A-Go-Go), need about 5,000 more to hit the end of the story, and then I’ll go back and prune between 7,000 and 10,000 words. (This won’t be as difficult as it sounds.)
The numbers geek in me wonders how to adjust the raw word count in the case of revisions. If I cut 3,000 words in the course of a week, should I count that as +3,000 towards my total? How about rewrites, which may result in net same number of words, but they’re better words? Or – terrifying thought – should I task myself with writing three first drafts of 10,000-word short stories for the challenge, then go back and revise them later? (But that’s three whole stories, eek!)
I’m using the “Angst” category for this post in a tongue-in-cheek sense. If I can come out of Write-A-Go-Go with a completed work ready to ship, I’ll count it as a win, in a “spirit of the law” sort of sense. Mostly, I’m wondering if anyone else is in this position.
I’m doing loads of rewrites with write-a-go-go. Also, I’m writing poety so if I’m counting words then I’m screwed. It’s all about the time for me. And certainly, if you can take out 3000 words that must count. I mean, negatives count in math don’t they?
Well, it’s probably best to go with whatever feels comfortable to you. But if I were trying to determine a “word count” from editing, I’d take into account how much work I was doing during the editing process. For example, if I just looked at a 1,000 word scene and decided that it all had to go, it’s not as much work as trimming and rewriting a 1,000 word scene down to 500 words. So I’d count the full 1,000 words from the second example, but I might not count the first example as words at all, or I might say it’s only “worth” 500 words, instead of 1,000. Of course, I like to make things difficult for myself.
Another possibility is to count editing time–so when you’re editing, change your goal from a word count goal to a goal of spending x number of hours editing.
I think editing time is the best metric to choose. I’ve only produced 1500 words since the start, but they’ve been picked at and edited and massaged and generally messed with for HOURS.