As most of you know from previous posts, comments I’ve made, and for the mind-readers out there, that I believe the faithful old writer’s term “word count” is about as useful to the quality of a book as is the words “pigeon shit”. Now pardon my New York Central Park language, but what in the great, green grass Universe has word count got to do with what’s between the covers? The answer is NOTHING.

Now, let’s set some ground rules first:

There are lines, fuzzy as they may get, between calling a piece a short story, a short-short, a novella, a novel—but in the end, if you’re anywhere near the count (and I’m not talking about people running contests where either the point is to write in so many words—normally a smaller number—or having a maximum count so that their readers aren’t judging “short stories” that are 100,000 words long) all I, or anyone else, care about is how well your book reads. In other words, pay attention to the Eight Commandments of writing a better book (shameless self-plug), NOT word count.

In fact, I will go as far as to say this: I’ve heard writers talking about word count like men talk about the length of their johnsons. As in, if one novel is 50,000 words, and another is 100,000, there is some implication that longer is better. On the contrary. I would bet anyone whose last name is not Dickens, Tolstoy, or Joyce that a 100,000 word book has a few extra sentences.

More like a hundred.

In all seriousness, if your book is its very best at 100,000 words, you should be writing 100,000 words. If mine is best at 50,000, then so be it. We aren’t talking about changing the oil in an engine here, where there’s a predetermined (and necessary) level of fluid, or a cake recipe, where baking soda confused with baking powder or eggs, flour, etc. in the wrong amounts will cause havoc—we’re talking about a work of art.

How can anyone say what word count a book should be before it’s written? Oh, sure, for ballpark estimates and such. If your best work in Genre A is 100,000 words and now you’re going to crank out some no-fluff, all-action, pulp fiction at 60,000 a pop, talk all day long about your cock size—I mean BOOK SIZE (and I was talking about his CHICKEN, you dirty-minded souls).

Which segues into another reality: that size, to a point, could have a little to do with price, genre, and some other factors (notoriety, for one—for the foreseeable future, James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, and Patricia Cornwell are all going to be able to charge 7-8 times what I can for, in some cases, arguably comparable quality).

Back in the day, when I was paying my hard-earned $25.99 as a teenager for the latest hardback Stephen King novel, would I have noticed 50,000 words versus 100,000? Probably. (Not that anyone will ever have to worry about King writing too few words, but you get the point.) If we were talking about $10-20 per unit here (still talking books, folks), I can see—to a point—where size might come into it. You may personally feel you didn’t get what you paid for if you dropped $16 on a book and read it in one sitting.

Realistically, could I add length to a book and still maintain the quality? Well think about it. I have 6-7 books out there. I just made one into a digital trilogy “boxed set”. All that document is amounts to combining the other three books, which makes for?

A longer word count / bigger book. Granted it would be written much differently because we’re talking three different plot arcs, etc., but if more words were absolutely necessary look at it like this: over a writer’s lifetime, how many words will she or he write? Assuming they are all good, that’s an enormous number of words. All I am saying is write the story. Write it from the core—the heart, the soul. And tell as much little as possible, showing with the absence of need for letters on the page.

Alas, these days when some people won’t really start considering an Unknown’s book until they get at least a taste at 99 cents? Well, don’t get me started on 99 cents for a new book, or for that matter, even $3.99. But if the prices of books are going to stay at less than a Starbucks coffee, I’m not going to write the entire adventures of my main character in one 150,000 word novel and sell it for chump change. Not when King’s latest piece of doo-doo short story that he completely phoned in (Mile 81, which is more than the page count) is selling for the same price as most Unknowns fresh novels and his “novel-length” work is still going for $8.99 (stuff from the 70s) to $15.99 for the recent releases (and yes, I’m talking Kindle prices, not Hardback). I think 50,000 quality words for $3.99 is more than fair.

And the last thing the market needs is a gaggle of mediocre writers trying to ADD more words to make their books longer. Has anyone out there ever been in a writing workshop or class where you were working hard at giving honest critiques and ever found yourself telling another writer to add a lot more verbiage to make a section better?

Elie Wiesel, one of my favorite writers, said this (also my favorite writer’s quote):

“Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.”

So don’t let them beat you up over word count. I’ll go so far as to say “try making your work shorter.” I used to hate the editing process when I was younger, not because it was hard (I loved making the piece stronger, as is suggested by Wiesel), but rather because I NEVER ended up with MORE words (and back then, all anyone clamored about was “one hundred thousand words makes a good novel”—even though, by most definitions, 50,000 is the minimum for “calling” it a novel versus novella).

Better quality, fewer words.

Try it.

More with less, writers.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)