How many words

Hi Clarisse! So sorry for the late reply! We just moved, and I've been without internet for a few days.
I don't mind the question at all!! Master was roughly 95K words, and Sword was about 100K. My first drafts are always shorter than that, and I end up layering in details in my second passes. I don't do chapter breakdowns or plan in advance how long the books should be.

By about the 60K word mark, I generally have a sense of how long it will end up being. This is the point at which I'll know if it's feeling too short or if I've taken on too much and need to prune. Likewise, by this point, I generally have a sense of whether or not I'll need more and beefier subplots/supporting characters.

I have a big white board onto which I stick a flurry of post-it notes. Each post-it has a plot point, or some random thought or bit of dialogue. I can then arrange and rearrange these to get a sense of how the story should arc. And best of all, I pull off and throw away each post-it when I'm done with that scene, which always feels great! :)

The only word count I think about on a day-to-day basis is how much I've written in a day. My husband created an Excel doc for me that helps me count how many words I've written that day, how many I need to write to make my deadline, and how many I'm averaging. I'm about a 1000 words a day kinda gal. :)

Hope this helps! I'm always happy to field writing questions. I remember when I first began Master, I felt a bit at sea, figuring out how to even approach the thing...!

— veronica     Sun, 06/22/2008 - 9:28am