A quick question for writers

[msagara]

I mentioned earlier that I have been using the equivalent of MS Word's wordcount while writing, and that this has not perhaps been very smart. I know that we're all looking at the lengths of our various books, and I was wondering: How do you keep track of wordcount while writing? Because I had an extra 45K words and an extra 25K words when looking at the page runoffs on the two books I did write in Scrivener, and this was ... unfortunate. And I would like not to repeat it if I can*.

If you need to turn in a 100k manuscript--or a manuscript of a specific maximum length--do you check the runoff count as part of your daily writing, do you format it in manuscript format so you write -to- a runoff count?

ETA: * I am aware that there might be a bit of gentle mockery at this point

Comments

[domynoe.livejournal.com]

I don't use Word. I use a program called Atlantis and I use the word count from it. It seems more accurate than Word and keeps note of the word count in the bottom bar of the program, so I only have to check it when I want to know the count of a specific section.

I have to admit, I don't know what a runoff is in regards to word counts. When done with the piece, I just count the whole thing. If I need to make cuts, I start looking for places to make those cuts until the count is where I need it. Wish I wrote more cleanly than that to begin with, but I'm not so blessed. It usually takes at least 4 or 5 revisions to get where it needs to be and as good as it can be.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

The runoff count (or castoff count, as it's sometimes called) is based on 12 pt. courier (or 10 pt - but it has to be a mono-space font), double spaced, one inch margins.

This is used to determine things like the cost of typesetting, and it gives a rough estimate of typeset pages, which you can then estimate printing costs for a book.

[camille-is-here.livejournal.com]

Ah! That used to be the way I did it, but now, because Times Roman ms pages and print are so close, I mostly keep track of pages and let Word count the words.