Fuck Wordcounts

One of the reasons I don’t like wordcounts as a measure of writing activity is because, to me at least, so much of writing is editing, and so much of editing is deleting things, like:

- The reader doesn’t need to know this
- The reader can figure this out for themselves
- This description is unnecessary
- This subordinate clause is unnecessary
- This prepositional phrase is unnecessary
- This past perfect participle is unnecessary
- This dialogue tag is unnecessary
- This sentence needs to be shorter
- You repeated this word like three times
- You like this word but it breaks the flow of the sentence
- This observation is not as amusing to the reader as it is to you

I have to admit that I don’t much care for writing advice along the lines of “show don’t tell” and “don’t force the character’s perspective on the reader,” none of which tends to work with the sort of limited third-person narration I favor, in which the reader only has access to what the character would notice or remark on. In fact, I tend to find action-focused third-person omniscient narration tedious.

Still, so much of editing is deleting and rewriting, which is why I can spend an intense and focused half hour on a piece of writing and go from 1570 words to 1530 words. Work is being done, but “wordcount” just isn’t a meaningful measure of progress.

Idk, I always get a little defensive during Nanowrimo. Every month is novel writing month in my house.