Brief musings on words count.

[matt_doyle]

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.