What’s with all the words?
In Act 2, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius, attempting to learn the cause of Hamlet’s distraction, asks the prince “What do you read, my lord?” To which Hamlet replies, “Words, words, words,” either to perpetuate his madness ruse or to disguise what he is in fact reading. Or, perhaps, to suggest that it doesn’t matter what he’s reading because it’s only words.
Words were very important to Shakespeare, obviously, and as a writer I feel the same way. We are always on the hunt for just the right word to use, and good writers seek to use words in a fresh and interesting way. I’ve been reading the work of an Irish writer, Kevin Barry (Night Boat to Tangier and The Heart in Winter to name two), and I’ve been blown away by his dazzling language.
I suppose it should go without saying that the choice of the words a writer uses is critically important, but what I want to talk about today is the number of words a writer uses. Non-writers almost never think about words as a number. Pages, sometimes, as in “That book is 600 pages, which is about 500 pages too many.” But usually not words. (A 600-page book might have between 150,000 and 300,000 words, depending on various factors of typography.)
Writers, on the other hand, think a lot about the number of words. In my MFA program, I was told that a debut novelist should aim for about 80,000 words, but that some genres, like fantasy, might go considerably higher. (The current trend is toward shorter books.) I also discovered that many literary magazines put word count limits on stories they’ll publish, many at around 5,000 words. Flash fiction magazines want stories that are far shorter than that, often capped at 1,000 words.
Not long after I finished my MFA program, I heard about something called NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. This is an event held every November in which participants commit to writing a 50,000-word novel in one month. Broken down by day, that would be an average of 1,667 words every day for the month, including Thanksgiving. Of course, that would be a short novel, given what I noted above, and it would probably not be very good, but in my opinion, for some writers, it’s not a bad idea to rush out a draft like that (or even a partial draft) to give you raw material to work with in the rewriting and editing process.
I remember a few years ago participating in an online discussion about NaNoWriMo in which I applauded someone who was racing toward their 50,000-word goal. A novelist I know who has published a few novels with major publishers dismissed the whole endeavor as amateurish and unserious. I argued that it’s not uncommon for successful writers to hold themselves to daily word counts, so why is NaNoWriMo any different? That writer dismissed daily word counts, too. I suppose the point was that art can’t be held captive to numeric targets. I didn’t want to prolong the argument, but I disagreed. To move to the next step in the process, you have to start with something—words, words, words. Even Shakespeare wrote first drafts.
This leads me, finally, to the point of this discussion. I’ve spent the last year promoting my novel The Last Bird of Paradise, which came out in February 2024, so I’ve done little new writing. Between the time that novel was finished and its actual publication (close to an 18-month stretch), I had begun researching and writing a new novel, but for most of last year it languished.
Earlier this year, however, I joined a critique group of writers with at least one published book to their credit. There are six writers in the group, and each week we read 15-20 pages of work by three of us, then meet on Zoom to discuss and offer suggestions to the writers. We are all writing very different books, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone because it’s all about the craft of writing.
It had been a very long time since I’d regularly shared work in progress with another writer. I had a couple of writing buddies after I graduated from my MFA program, and after that group fell apart I traded work with one other writer, but that too came to an end after a while. While I am extremely grateful for the feedback from the group, perhaps the most valuable part of the exercise for me is being held accountable. I’m expected to submit 4,000 to 5,000 words to the group every other week, so that is keeping me moving forward in the new project.
As of last week, I set a goal of 1,000 words a day. That worked out great for a few days, and then . . . life happened: a dentist appointment, a few Zoom meetings I’d committed to, etc. Still, I managed 4,000 words for the week, and that’s not bad. Given that other obligations will continue to crop up, if I can hit that goal every week, it won’t be long before I have a complete draft of this book and can begin the revision process.
And how long will the draft be? Good question. Currently, the work in progress is 20,000 words. I am thinking of this project as being a short novel, probably no more than 70,000 words. (For comparison, my three previous novels have been between 90,000 and 110,000 words.) If I continue to produce 4,000 words each week, I may have a complete draft by the end of the summer, although my critique group won’t have seen all of it until the end of the year. That’s the goal. It all depends on the words, words, words.
