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

[stevenagy.livejournal.com]

I place it in a manuscript format that gives me 250 words per page. It's actually 252 if I don't round down, but it's close enough. So, 400 pages equals 100,000 words.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Me, too. 25 words per page, average 1o words per line. Page count is so much easier for me to aim for.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

oops 25 lines per page!

[msagara.livejournal.com]

This is what I used to do (for every book before Cast in Silence and House Name. And the one other project.

But..some of the Scrivener features are really, really useful for me in ways that I hadn't thought they would be when I decided I would "just try it for now". Next post, I'll ask people how the heck they manage to figure out how long a book is actually going to be *rueful g*.