Interesting day, this election day. It’s fair to say that voting cost me probably 1,200 words–though it trough I probably would have used that hour and a half wait to cut the grass. But I got 2,600 words this morning, and then I got back to it over the past hour and powered down another 550 or so, for a total count today of 3,123 words by the Microsoft word counter.
Aside: I can’t help but notice how word count has changed since I started writing. We used to count by the printer word–which is basically 250 words a page. This was independent of white space (which is often prevalent in dialog, for example). The printer’s word count will tend to expand the count vs. the “actual” count that Word will give. Not sure what it means overall, but for magazines–that generally pay by the word–it reduces the value of stories. Whatever. no one seems to ever use printer’s word counts now, though, and I never hear any writer talking about it, which seems strange, really. We’re usually so nit-picky about anything that affects the money that flows toward writers.
Anyway, my work this evening was useful in that much of the word-count I’m gathering is in pseudo-code, that has really helped me power through a couple plot issues I’ve been worrying about. For example, I now know what’s going to happen with these two main characters I put together this morning, and I know coarsely how the third character is going to interact with the other two. Good deal, eh?
This is also a good portent for tomorrow’s word count because 500 or so words in pseudo-code will probably expand to 3-5,000 words in manuscript. Perhaps more if weird story magic occurs along the way.
So, anyway…I hit my 3K goal again, so I declare it a great day. And, oh, yeah, I must say it’s nice to see my number edge past Brigid’s–even if it’s for only a few moments. [grin]