(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

[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.