Word Count

[WittyUserName]

Word Counts. Do you Use them? Do You hate them?

I've always had mixed feelings about them. Sure, it's a great feeling to realize, at the end of the day (or even week) you've got 5K-10K+ written. At the same time, sitting at the keyboard and realizing you haven't even reached triple digits only emphasizes the frustration. I've never participated in NaNo WriMo because I know, both then and now, that the deadlines and expectations would kill my creativity. At the same time, I used to keep digital diaries for each of my major projects detailing daily word-count.

These days, I don't keep track. My home computer doesn't provide easy access to the data (I'm sure it's there somewhere but it would require effort to discover). When I'm writing on a computer that does display it in the bottom corner, I have found I sometimes begin to worry about chapter lengths and the overall length of the novel. It pushes me a little, but it also sends worrying signals about the quality of the piece.

I don't keep track. Never really have.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I find it interesting how many people prefer mid to short length stories. My love of reading comes from constantly having a book in hand/pocket when I was growing up. I've never been as fond of anthologies because the shorter stories often lack the depth of longer ones (frequently because the authors include the depth in a series and use the short stories for unconnected scenes).

Of course, I'm also in the minority here in that I originally came here as an author not a reader.

As someone who has struggled to do chapters of my story that are less than 20k words lately, this is music to my ears, lol.

 

[Katie_Mae]

I find it interesting how many people prefer mid to short length stories. My love of reading comes from constantly having a book in hand/pocket when I was growing up. I've never been as fond of anthologies because the shorter stories often lack the depth of longer ones (frequently because the authors include the depth in a series and use the short stories for unconnected scenes).

Of course, I'm also in the minority here in that I originally came here as an author not a reader.

I prefer to read longer stories also. I came here as a reader, and initially signed up for an account to follow an author writing a long, chaptered story.
My natural state of writing is to prefer to write longer stories, though on lit I only posted one over 100k. I'm getting back into writing the longer ones though.

I think in both writing and reading there's an element of how long you want to put into it. Especially when reading an unknown hobby writer, you might not want to dedicate the novel-length reading time. If that makes sense.