I'm Not Counting #MFRWauthor

Besides being highly regimented, most of my time is not my own. On a good day calling it erratic and chaotic is kind. So for me, I don't track or even think of word counts as usually defined in a writing life.

One reason is there are so many more aspects to creating a book than just writing. The tally doesn't take into account writing blog posts on both mine and others sites, and notes on facebook or other social media. Then there is also editing. And 'to pay it forward,'I've been honored the last year to contribute to the Romance University blog. Then there is helping other authors in a more personal means with the reading, critiquing, and editing to their works. Such things hone a skill but don't necessarily contribute to a word count.

So as you can see, the goal of writing a specific number of words per day or per week doesn't work for me. I'm too busy doing rather than tracking and counting.

That said, something else is associated with a word count--the number of words as it relates to the length of the books. That number does matter, if only as a guideline. I won't go into a depth explanation of short story, novella, novel and epic novel. Nor into the differences in word count expectations between genre and format.

No, I don't write a number of words per day. But I do try to dedicate a certain amount of time to writing, editing, and marketing. And I track the chapter lengths of a work-in-progress to give me a running idea of how far along I am.

Do words counts matter to you? Leave a comment below.




Hope you'll visit the other authors in the challenge to see their take on word counts.

~till next time, Helen