Brief musings on words count.
616 words today on The Hellion Prince. I've changed my daily goal -- 250 words a day, which I would once have counted lucky, has already become utterly mundane, the work of an hour at most, and when I calculated my average words per day so far this year, it came to 425, so that's my new daily goal. So far I have only missed it once (I made the switch a little over a week ago). If I continue to be successful, I may eventually up it again... but not soon. I think Chapter Ten and my recent short story work has been more verbose than it needed to be. I don't consciously write fluff in order to meet my quotas, but I think at least a little inflation is happening anyway. I don't want to write 425 words every day that I will have to go back and prune later -- I want the right 425 words. But at the same time, I won't go back to a goal of only 250, because right now the problem I am trying to solve is the problem of Butt In Chair, Words on Page. I am trying to excise writer's block from my life, and eliminate the dependence on inspiration, the mystical notion that I require some esoteric or arcane conditions in order to be properly creative and productive. Inspiration is nice. It makes things come more easily. But if I want to be a writer I have to be able to do this every day whetehr it is easy or not. I have to exercise this muscle. The problem of needless words I am not omitting* can be addressed later.
*This is an allusion. Tell me if you get it so I can feel validated.
*This is an allusion. Tell me if you get it so I can feel validated.