I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Friday, September 11, 2009

Numbers Update

Well, working last night's extra piece in added another 331 words. So I'll add that to the wordcount in just a sec. Also got about 900 words into Chapter 24. Hopefully I can finish up 24 and get into 25 this weekend.

This afternoon we received the Wii Fit, but not the Wii itself. And there's something I ordered three days before which has also not arrived. Gotta love the wonderful shipping.

Tomorrow will be various runnings around. Hopefully Sunday will be nice and calm.

edit just went through and redid the math and found I shorted myself a few thousand words. I went through and triple checked. I'm now at 40056 words. Yippie for me!

2 comments:

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

My god..sometimes the numbers game kills me. Clackety-clackety,clackety-tap-tap------how many words now? clackety,clack. Clack. What about now?

Steve Buchheit said...

Stewart, that's why I said in a previous post, it's just a handy metric (which is why I only update the meter when I put a chapter in the first draft folder). While my goal is to make each chapter a fast read with keeping them below 3000 words, I've written them larger, then, either when I'm done or close to done, find a good break point to separate them. But I can't post those rationally. It's sort of like how the money I make really isn't the point of my work (as long as I'm making enough to do the things I have to/or want). However, it does make a handy shorthand reference for professional development (really, I left off doing computer programming, which I was good at, which had starting salaries in the $60k range, and went into Graphic Design, which I love, but I started at $22k and had a hell of a lot more fun).

What really jazzes me is when the story surprises me. Or it goes in a direction I didn't expect. Or I get a simile or metaphor that cranks.

The wordcount is also good for me to see if we're on target as far as the story being a novel (novella, short-story, flash) and working into a publishable range. It also helps with tracking how well I've done my job and how far I've come as a writer (like when I wrote my first competent short-story under 4000 words, or could write a story to size).

Right now I'm composing in Text Edit, which doesn't give me a word count (so my intra-story counts are all estimates). It's only when I format it through word when I find out how correct I am. Text edit also doesn't give me page breaks or any of that other stuff, and I've found it much easier. The words flow better.