Work count is my enemy. I like long books, and when I started writing, I didn’t know how to judge the length of a book. I thought that it had more to do with page number, and when someone mentioned word count, I really had no idea what they meant. (I did not know about the handy Word Count Tool in tool bar—that would have been nice for some homework assignments…) But then I saw it one day and my life became a lot easier. I was able to tell how long my book was for real, not just its page number.
But then I ran into a dilemma. According to various author sites, my manuscript was getting too long. And these sites said that amateur authors should stick on the lower edge of word count. That was not good news for me. I did a little more digging, and I stumbled upon the advice that a good editor could edit down a book to the good parts, but that an author should attempt to strip away what wasn’t necessary. I have this issue with perfectionism. Both that I want my work to be “perfect,” and I never think it is until someone else suggests that it isn’t. So I swallowed my pride and got down one day to do some major editing.
Thankfully, there were no tears. I was able to get my word count down to something slightly more reasonable. However, I still hold to the belief that a book should be as long as it needs to be…in reason.