Counting Words

You'll notice each day that I sit down to work on my manuscript, I keep a tally of how many words I accomplish. Keeping track of words is an author's business, but just like anything, squinting your eyes too keenly on that number creates wrinkles--in your writing, that is.

Check this out:

a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

Those are ALL the words in one book. Granted, it's a kid's book (guess which one correctly--email me your answer at michellegriep@gmail.com--and I'll send you an e-book version of UNDERCURRENT), but do you think the author stressed over the amount of words? Not so much. It's more about content.

Yeah, I'm beating the content drum again.

I read a lot, and I'm noticing a creepy little trend. More often than not, authors go for cliche. Trite. Words that take up space without imparting a whole lot of wow factor.

Before you pull out your pitchforks, I totally get that in a novel of 90k, not all the words are going to be stellar, or even mildly entertaining, but for the most part...shouldn't they?

Go ahead and focus on word count for your first draft, but let that be exactly what it is--a first draft. After that, go through and flag the mundane, the ho-hum, the yawners, and while you're at it, the repetitions.

The bottom line is make every word count instead of counting words.