On Word Count and Other Matters

Greetings all.

Thanks so much for all the great comments regarding “Debbie Downer and the Dreaded Don’ts” What fun it was to read your comments and I must say I did enjoy flipping the established pedantry the collective bird.  We are such rebels, aren’t we?  Take that Elmore!!! And that!!!  We are artists!  We shall not be conservative with exclamation marks!!  Hyah!!!!

Some of you may remember my blog entitled “Force-Feeding the Classics”.  Many had fond memories of “Where the Red Fern Grows” in particular.  Well, I force-fed it to my eleven year old and was surprised by how much eye-rolling and groaning accompanied the enforced reading.  It began with making fun of the rather stodgy picture of Wilson Rawls on the back.  (He did look like a bit like a rat-pack gangster.) Then she had the audacity to guffaw at the names “Old Dan” and “Little Ann.”  Eventually she ended up siding with the raccoons!  ("Who’d want to spend two years working to buy dogs just so you could go out and kill raccoons?!  They’re adorable!!")

 

I finally told her she didn’t have to finish the damn thing but she wanted to find out why everyone always makes such a fuss about the ending and “those dogs better not die after all the time and energy I am putting into reading this book!”  I let her off the hook and that one went back to the library unfinished.  Experiment over.  Back to fairy-land for her.  (Note to readers:  I didn’t re-read it either.)

Lastly a poll:  Do you feel the need to be brief when you write?  I’ve noticed as I’m hitting the 50,000 word-mark in my WIP there’s this nagging feeling that I am taking too long to tell my story.  Now this may stem from a life-time of talking too much, and being told I need to stop talking so much, or it could just be the desire to expedite the story and get to the end already--fer cryin’ out loud! 

The guy in the turtleneck over at Writer’s Digest tells me I’m already past the acceptable word-count mark for MG fiction and explains it is because I don’t know how to edit.  However, Turtleneck assures me that YA word count is “very flexible” but to still shoot for 55,000 to 70,000 words.  Any more than that and I’m “playing with fire”.   

A very nice editor named Jessica over at Bookends made me feel a trifle better with her realistic post on Word Count.  She went for an overall of 80,000. I can live with that—I think.

Well, what’s your feel on this topic Peeps?  Do you pay word counts no-never-mind?  Do you aim for a required number or do you bunch of rabble-rousers fly your own kite in the face of such creative communism?  Weigh in below.  What are you and yours tipping the scales at?  (Yes, I know I ended a sentence with a preposition and somewhere Elmore Leonard is developing a sick headache!!!)

~Just Jill (!!)