My Extensive Love/Hate Relationship With Word Counts

I've been drafting a novel that I originally expected to be about 90,000 words. I write regularly, and I had put down what felt like a lot of words over the past two months. When I checked, though, my total word count sat at an unsatisfying 35k. It didn't feel right at all. I knew I must have a lot more words than that, but I suck at math and I didn't feel like arguing with my computer, so I let it go and kept typing away, though admittedly at a much slower rate and rather upset.

Apparently, I...