Why Count Words?

My buddy Jody had a mini-rant in the comments of my last post. (Aside: I HATE blogger!! It won't let me cut and paste--I had to retype the darn quote!! Aaarrrggghhh!) It bothered her that I tried to set a daily word count.

". . . you've GOT to just drop the whole "word count" beeswax. Word count means NOTHING. You can write 5000 word and they can all be CRAP. Or you can write one absolutely stellar passage."

". . . I set a goal to work out a particular section, chapter, passage, scene, whatever."

Of course, Jody thought I'd get pissed at this, but I just chuckled. Why? Because there is no one way that works for everyone, in every circumstance. If I had a short article to write, I might approach it in a different manner than I would a 100K novel. But I doubt it.

I've tried the tweak until it's perfect route, BUT I get so bogged down in the immediate that I tend to lose sight of the big picture. For something short, it doesn't matter. Because it's finished in a couple of pages, giving the writer plenty of time to tweak. In other words, writing a 500 word picture book is vastly different than a 25K word novella or a 100K novel. Yes, I have done them all. Each style has it's own challenges and requirements, but they all have to have pacing, plot, character arc, etc.

For my novels, I've recently discovered the 'puke it out' method, otherwise known as the Karin Tabke method. I used it for my middle grade story, MISSING: One Garden Gnome. I don't plot, which means I figure out the story AND characters as I write. I started this story in the mother's third person point of view, but finished it in the eleven-year-old Rhee's point of view. I had to go back and delete the first two chapters. There was no tweaking involved. Trust me, a kid does NOT think like an adult. Oh, the scenes were technically the same, as in the same location, but that's it.
--If I had tweaked this scene until it was perfect, I still would have had to delete my 'perfect words'. They wouldn't have fit my story.

BUT, an online friend sent this question and answer for Dean Koontz link to my goals group. Mr. Koontz is a tweak each page as you go type of writer, sometimes diddling with it for 20-40 PASSES! It works for his process.

So I count words. Jody perfects her scenes. When I still worked at a hospital , I wrote from 4:00-4:45 AM. The only way to find out what works for you is to try different things.

Write on!