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

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Speaking in my Text Designer (that is, the person who designs and typesets the interior of the book) guise:

The absolute wordcount is not relevant. If you are a writer who uses a lot of long paragraphs, you will pack more words onto a single typeset page. If, however, you tend toward lots of dialogue, your typeset pages will have a lot of white space, and not very many words per page.

There are other factors as well: using fewer, longer chapters takes less room than many little chapters (all that white space at the beginning and end, you see).

The best approach a writer can take is to use SMF. 12pt courier, double spaced, 1" margins all around. Then you count each manuscript page as 250 words, (regardless of how many words actually are on an individual page).

So if you need to turn in a 100K manuscript, you need 400 manuscript pages in standard format. If you tend to long paragraphs and not so much dialogue, you can probably run past that a little bit.

Also, be sure not to suppress widows and orphans. Again, depending on your stylistic quirks, that might make your manuscript appear longer than it really is.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

You know what makes me nuts? My agent, and a whole lot of agents out there now, don't give a fig about SMF word count or page count. They want all counts given in MSWord. Some of them even have that in their guidelines now. I know friends whose editors wanted their books turned in using MSWord count as well.

My agent told me to forget counting in SMF. She doesn't want to see it or hear it. Yet it seems that is still how some publishers count. I know that's how you count when type setting and designing a book.

Someone, somewhere, needs to make a decision. I like standards and consistency.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Maybe the publishers they deal with don't care, now.

I know that authors do turn in books in non-traditional formats to even my publishers; I know at least DAW will then have to send that manuscript for castoff counting -- so to the publisher, the castoff counts appear to still be used.

But maybe that differs from publisher to publisher, and even from large publisher to large publisher. I know that DAW, and therefore by extension Ace and Roc, use the castoff counts for cost approximations.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

It's the difference between acquisitions and production.

At the acquisitions stage, the editors and agents know the manuscript isn't final. It will be edited and rewritten. It just needs to be in the ballpark at this stage, so the MSWord count is fine.

By the time the book is headed to production, however, they want a better idea of how long the book is going to be so there are no surprises on the P&L.