(no subject)

[intothewood]

I'm wondering....

Do you all read within your genre?
I won't do it because I don't want to be influenced in any way, but I will watch films within my genre, and I listen to a lot of music for inspiration.

I believe duskpeterson mentioned tracking word counts - do you do this?
I can't do word counts, because it would drive me mad. People ask me how many words I've written on a specific piece - I don't know, and I don't want to know. I guess it makes me feel like I'm assigning worth to what I've written by a quantity, and I don't want to do that. When I reach the end I'll look to see what I have purely as a gage within common classifications in the book industry, but I hate doing even that much.

I think of books like Notes From Underground or Death in Venice that have relatively small word counts and would be classified as novellas, but what does that mean? That they're less valuable in some way? As profit margins, yes. As stories, they're massive. It bothers me.

Comments

[noctuary]

I track wordcounts if I have a particular number goal I have to reach. Otherwise it's more or less just an interest factor. Generally novels are between 70 and 100k, and I imagine whether or not a publisher picks it up will have something to do with length, but it's not going to be the only thing they consider. The story is more important than the length, so it's not something to aim for so much as something to keep in mind as you go, when considering how much of the story is yet to come and so forth.

[cleio]

I do read a good bit in the genre I write in. Mostly simply because I enjoy that type of story, although I will also look at them critically and try to figure out what works, what doesn't, and why.

As far as word counts go, I do keep a close eye on it, but that is a habit I have from my academic writing, where word count is everything. When writing fiction, it doesn't really bother me. I reach the end when I reach the end, to echo your own words.

I think sometimes, especially in genres such as fantasy, an author seems to want to force a high word count, meaning that the story would have been better if loads of unnecessary detail or description would have simply been left out. It can interrupt the flow of the story, taking away from strength of the plot.

[niniane]

I read a lot in my genre. Without knowing what's been done, it's hard to know if what I'm doing is unique and interesting, or a rip off of a far better writer. Nothing's unique, but...some ideas are so overdone that you need to be really unusual to stand out.

(Incidentally, I read a lot in other genres, too. I read a lot in general.)

I tend to watch word count just in that I like knowing how much I've written. *shrugs* I feel like I haven't achieved much if I've only gotten 100 words in a day, while I'm usually fairly pleased if I got in 5,000. (Although generally when I'm that prolific, I have to cut half of what I've written.) It's also nice to me to get a feeling for the kind of editing I'm going to have to do. In general, if a scene has 10,000 words, I'm going to need to cut at least half - while if I have 200, I may need to add more. Not always, but it's a rough gauge as to whether I need less internal monologue or more description.

In addition, I do like to keep track of word count as it is important if I want to sell stuff. Stories sell best at around 2,000-8,000 words. If the story requires 25,000 words, fine, I'll go there. But I'll definitely ask if it wouldn't be better off as a (more salable) novel or short story. Sometimes you can trim fluff (good!), add description (good!), or delete entire plot lines. *shrugs* If it's the difference between the story having a real shot and languishing on my computer, yeah, I'll do it. Not always, but generally.

[analect]

Ooh, interesting thing you raise about the novella tag. (And hello and welcome to cleio!) As far as I go, when I read, I read widely, and it doesn't necessarily bear much relation to what I write. F'rex, I write romance, but don't really read it, aside from keeping an occasional eye on market trends.

Word counts... yes. In writing for pleasure, I don't really bother too much, except in the sense of using them as rough gauges. Everything else, word count gives at least a broad-spectrum idea of where the beginning, middle and end fall, and balances things out. It doesn't need to be specific, and tbh I don't really like the idea that, say, a chapter *has* to be so many words and neither over nor under. Every story has a rhythm, and for me wordage is a tool in measuring and controlling that, but I tend not to obsess.

[auguris]

I read a variety of genres and nonfiction -- as long as I don't read something similar and then jump right into writing, it doesn't effect me. Although if I've been obsessing over a series or genre, I have to cleanse my mental pallet before I work on anything -- usually playing Civ IV does it for me, or reading the news.

I personally use word counts to assess how I'm doing. "Hey, I managed 2K today? Good job self!" Or, "yikes, I've done 50 words in an hour, today obviously isn't going to happen." I don't judge a work by how long it is, though. It's nice to have a word count for work posted online, but only as a way to assess how long it might take me to get through -- for me it's the same as using the thickness of a physical book to judge how long it will take me to read it.