I’ve been copying my posts month by month to organize them for the book. They will provide me with text, context and a time frame. I can do a search on topics like, the chamber of Commerce or School Board meetings to give me instant time lines.
I was about to turn in when I decided to do a word check to see how many words I’d posted in the recently completed month of June. Turns out its over 30,000.
Then I checked May and it was 29,400 words. In the past two years I’ve taken breaks from blogging to write in other venues about the Red Plan controversy. This, of course, doesn’t even take into consideration the emails I’ve sent out. If I had simply written 30,000 words a month for two years on the Red Plan I’d have cranked out three quarters of a million words about it by now.
That got me curious. I’ve figured the most reasonable size for a book would be about 200 pages. Not too big. Not too small. So how many words would that be?
I found this page which gives some idea of the number of words in a paperback book.
Every publisher has their own guidelines as to word counts and what’s what, but here is a general idea according to what I’ve heard over the years…
Short… 7,000 to 20,000
Novella… 20,000 to 40,000
Catagory… 40,000 to 65,000
Novel… 65,000 to 90,000
Novel Plus… 90,000 to 120,000
Super Novel… 120,000+But wikipedia says differently…
Flash Fiction… 1,000 to 3,000
Short… 3,000 to 15,000
Novelette… 7,500 to 17,500
Novella… 17,500 to 40,000
Novel… 40,000 to 75,000
Epic… 75,000+
I won’t have to write this book so much as edit it.
