Sunday, July 18, 2021

Round numbers

Just a very quick update today.

Every evening, when I wrap up for the day, I tally my word count in a tracking spreadsheet. That may sound a bit nerdy, but I've blogged about this before as one of my motivational techniques. My spreadsheet graphs my progress week by week, and I like to see my "actual" line staying above the "target" line on the graph.

Today, I finished the week on exactly 90,000 words.

Talk about a round number.

Also a significant number, as that is often the starting target I pencil in to say I've reached a decent novel size. 

In this case, I know I've still got a long way to go. I think this novel is going to be closer to 150,000 by the time I finish. Noticeably fatter than my last two books, but not out of this world.

3 comments:

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Gosh Ian - that's a great number ... you've obviously been very involved with getting your words down. Congratulations and enjoy getting towards the end line ... enjoy - cheers Hilary

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Exactly ninety-thousand - wow.
Your novel will equal two of mine by the time you finish.

Botanist said...

Hilary, I've been working at it steadily since January. It all adds up over time.

Alex, Tiamat's Nest ended up around the 85k mark at publication time, and a lot of sci-fi classics are remarkably light on word count. This one just feels like it has a lot to say, and because I don't have to keep a publisher happy I don't need to fret about word count one way or the other :)

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