Counting Coups
July 15
First, some notes on word count, because I feel it probably needs explaining, as many of y'all readers aren't writers (those of you who already know how to actually do a word count on a manuscript, which has nothing to do with the actual "words" as counted by a word processor's word-count function, skip ahead to the next paragraph). When I use the "word count" function in MS Word, my word processor of default easiness, it counts each word -- "a," "the" and "of" count as much as "hyperkinetic," "antedeluvian" and "disestablishmentarianism" (all of which, interestingly, are words the stupid spellcheck doesn't recognize); that is to say, they're each considered one word, be they long or short. But when you calculate word count for a publisher, you're not really interested in how many words you have -- they don't care about that. They care about how much space your story, article, etc. is going to take up. Writers don't actually get paid by the word, they get paid by the column inch, by how much space they fill. Which means that a full page of short, snappy dialogue, with lots of white space on the page, is worth as much as the same page full of dense philosophical ruminations. So when you do a word count for a publisher, you don't look at the actual number of words. You count the number of words you have on a full line (and for this purpose, a "word" is five characters) . Then you multiply that by the number of lines on a page. Then you multiply that by the number of pages. Get it? So if you have lots of dialogue (or some dialogue and lots of pages), your "official" word count (which is understandably approximate) can be quite different from the word count your word processor gives you.
For the sake of laziness, my running word-count over on the right is mostly what the word count function on my word processor gives me, which actually underestimates my "official" word count, the one I put at the top of the page when I send manuscripts off to publishers. When I'm counting words written longhand, the count is more accurate; I write about 250 words a page, longhand, so that's how I count it. Anyway, the point of this is: According to my computer, Rangergirl is 74,175 words in length. That's how many actual gosh-dang words I've written. But let's see what my "official" word count is. I'm composing in Times New Roman, 12 pt font. I've got about 14 words per line. 23 lines per page. 255 pages. Do the math, and: 82,110 words.
To which I say: Eep. I did this last night, because I was trying to estimate how long the book's going to be when it's done. I figure I have 35 or 40,000 words left to write. Which means it's going to be the longest book I've written. My books don't tend to change size radically in revision, either; I add about as much stuff as I slash out, so generally the length only fluctuates by a few thousand words at the most. So we're looking at about 120K, probably, for the whole thing. Which isn't enormous -- Perdido Street Station is almost twice that long, for instance -- but it's big for me. Which is the point, insofar as I actually had one.
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The Songs from Dead Singers anthology (for which I wrote the lead story) is picking up some nice blurbs, from Tim Lebbon and John Pelan and Simon Clark. The publisher has commissioned a cover artist now, too -- the wonderful Chad Savage (that link goes to his weblog, but there's links to lots of other stuff, including artwork, on the page, too).
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I had a nice time at work today! I've been sort of anxiety-ridden, stressed into the red, for a while now, really for no discernible reason, but today was lovely. I got to smash apart a picnic table with a hammer, my boss served a lunch with many varieties of meat, and I did some writing for the magazine -- really, at its best, I truly adore my job.
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I read a thing today about how, when he had a day job, Terry Pratchett wrote 400 words a day, every day. And I think, "I can write 400 words a day." And I stop whining about not having time to write for a little while.
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I didn't work out tonight. I went to the coffee shop and finished reading Last Things, which is quite good, but I'll save details for the review I'm going to write. La and la and la some more.
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I finally got around to downloading a couple of video game emulators, which I've been meaning to do ever since I got more memory for my computer. I think I'm getting Heather addicted to Lemmings for the Super Nintendo. These were the games of my youth, y'all; it's nice to have them back, even if I do really need a gamepad to play most of them. I mean, I can play Lemmings and Tetris and such with my keyboard, but I won't be playing Super Mario Bros. 3 or Mega Man without a gamepad. I don't have batlike reflexes anymore, yo.
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Man, this is some kind of entry, huh? Boring and random. Sorry about that. It's just how they come out, sometimes.
Words written since February 1, 2002: 112,700
Words written since last entry: 1200
C'mon, lookit, Jon got one, and look what he did!
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