Wake Up - Two Thousand Words? · 4:02pm Nov 4th, 2018
Why is everything 2000 words?
This is a question I’ve been asked exactly once, but I think it makes for an interesting story about my writing style and what makes me tick. So you guys get the unique chance to hear me talk about myself. Remind you of anyone? So yeah, now that I’ve mentioned it you’re probably at least minimally curious as to why all of my chapters are 2000 words long? Well there are a couple reasons. Before we dig into that, let me talk a bit about how I stage my work, though.
At any point in time I aim to have at least 5 unpublished chapters in various stages of drafting. The next-in-line chapter is all but ready to release, waiting to be uploaded, formatted, and reviewed one last time within FimFiction. The chapter after that is final in the sense of story and direction, but I still may change some wording or semantics around. After that, the 3rd/middle chapter is still up for major changes, but at this point I should have the general idea pretty much down. The fourth chapter will still be a rough draft, with room for plenty of changes to the style, story, direction, wording, etc. Last is the most recent chapter I will have written. When I sit down to publish a new chapter this one will not have been reviewed at all since I wrote it, still fresh and dripping with editorial potential.
So when I get to working on Wake Up each day, here’s what I do:
● Look over the oldest unposted chapter a final time with fresh eyes. I’ll usually catch one or two minor changes that I’ll toss in.
● Upload the next-in-line chapter to FimFiction and pull it up in the reader view. I look for any formatting, visual flow, or other staging issues.
● Hit Publish on that new chapter and immediately close my browser. I get nervous around that F5 button if I keep it open, and then I get no work done.
● Open up the next chapter’s notes in my editor and lay out the chapter in my mind for a minute. I’ll start writing the chapter with a stream-of-consciousness exercise about some part of the chapter I’m passionate about. I usually end up deleting it, but it has led to some of my more treasured writing.
● Take a break from writing the current chapter and go for the second (now first) unpublished chapter. I’m looking for things that just don’t sound right, or places where I may have messed up while editing in previous iterations.
● Go back to writing the new chapter. I’ll usually get about 1000 words in and have a good idea of how I’ll finish it out.
● Edit the middle (now second) chapter, making noticeable changes but generally staying the course for the chapter.
● Go back to writing the new chapter. Usually I’ll either get 1500 words in happily or about 1750 words in with major regrets.
● Edit the 4th on-deck chapter, usually changing the chapter dramatically, and often editing my notes for future chapters in response.
● Go back to writing the new chapter. I’ll usually wrap the chapter in this step, but I always feel absolutely horrible about it.
● Edit yesterday’s new chapter, making significant changes and cursing myself for my idiocy.
● Clean up my notes going forward, make note of any upcoming pots I may have stirred with the new chapter or previous edits.
● Call it a wrap, go back to FimFiction and realize that nothing was going to happen in a few hours. If I’m still thinking straight, I leave immediately.
Here’s a picture that might make my weird workflow slightly more clear:
So why do you go through all that crap?
A few reasons actually:
- I work a full time job. I can eke about maybe 3 hours of writing in a day before I either run out of time or energy. That fits this schedule about perfectly.
- Most of the things I have trouble with in writing are the things that show up in context; characterization, descriptive writing, etc. These are things that are easier to spot when I’ve got a sandwich of chapters around what I’m working with.
- I like reading my work. It’s ultimately a world I’ve built, a world I want to indulge in. Editing every chapter 5 times and usually reading each one 10 or so times before I publish it not only gets me immersed in my world, but also helps me orient my mind for the next chapters.
What does that have to do with 2000 words?
- 2000 words is my perfect number. It’s right around the length of chapter that I’ll personally read, get really engaged in, and then salivate for more afterward.
- With working full time and dropping about 3 hours a day on this, I really can’t write more than that. Or at least not without sacrificing on editing time, which I won’t do.
- Working on a strict word count means I’m never patching a chapter by adding fluff or stripping out content. Given a boundary for my chapters means that I spend less time just writing and more time worried about writing well. It also helps smooth out the pacing of the story a bit.
So in closing, I guess the best explanation for all of this just boils down to eccentricity. I work best when I have a predictable, determined workflow in front of me. That helps me stay on task, power through blocks, and ultimately get shit done. In the past, I’ve written without a plan like this, and I was terrible with continuity. I’d publish once a year and continuously promise content but never deliver. I’m not going to be doing that anymore, not with this one.
Man, if that messed with you, I bet you’ll be even more confused when you realize all of my blog posts are exactly 1000 words long.
And meanwhile, here I am, considering it an accomplishment to have an assigment done more than one day before the deadline.
I can definitely get behind the fixed word count. Probably something I would do, were I to write creatively.
I have a better understanding of how you are putting things together now, and it's an interesting look into a different style of writing (I've seen writers that just dump tens of thousands of words a day and see what sticks, others that go chapter by chapter, and adjust the ongoing story as the comments flow in, some that have merely a vague idea and let the story evolve as they write it... all of them interesting in their own way of working).
I still need to sit down and figure out why my printer is on fire though.
Uh, doesn't check out.
I copy-pasted the post into
vim, and removed that damn "Resized to ..." thing, then did a word count:Whoops, 1004 words.
... Let's try removing those weird Unicode bullets that got copied, and replace them with asterisks. Change apostrophes to the ASCII ones as well, maybe that will fix it:
Uh, no!? That only changed the byte count!
Let's try removing the asterisks altogether, as most people wouldn't count them as words:
Dang! And now it's too low!
Well, seems like the numbered lists didn't get copied entirely, let's re-add the digits so each of those adds a (questionably valid) word.
Ugh, so close, yet so far...
Anyway, the moral is that there is no single agreed upon way to count words. The best you can do is nudge the Fimfiction word counter since most people look at that, but Fimfic doesn't report word counts for blogs, so that's kinda pointless.
EDIT: Hey, also this comment has exactly two hundred and fifty words!
I admit that I sometimes play with word counts whenever I feel like doing so, one of the first massive editing batches I've done was exactly 1500 words.
4984347
Yup. I use Scriviner's inbuilt counter for word count on blogs cause it's already there when I'm writing. I have no clue what it judges word count by, but it *often* agrees with Word, so there's that.
But you're right. There is no good way to count words. Are unnecessarily-hyphenated words one or multiple? Is — a word? So many questions.
Also... Operating on a debian-like system (probably an Ubuntu) AND actually using /tmp for throwaway work... I think I love you.