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   Cum Vampire (divinekestrel@chaosfem.tw)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Jul-2024 03:21:16 JST Cum Vampire

   Working on my post-dystopian novel and keep thinking about other writers I know who target wordcounts. I could never. It makes me feel stupid for how sparse my writing is.

   Decades of writing essays and plays and very short stories have made me so familiar with cut cut cut. Cut to the bone.

   Hell, with plays, every single word has to drive tension, drive the character toward what they want. There's no descriptions of the walls. It's minimalist dialog and that's it. Even essays where I describe things, it's minimize, minimize. Cut cut cut.

   I think "The purposes of this chapter are A, B, and C, and I have to introduce G and H for later." Then 750 words later I've accomplished all of that. And everything about writing novels is "Shoot for 2000-5000 words per chapter." What the fuck am I going to write about for 5000 words? That's like a book in itself! I can fit 3-4 chapters in that!

   I feel like such an imposter.

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     Cum Vampire (divinekestrel@chaosfem.tw)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Jul-2024 03:21:14 JST Cum Vampire

     in reply to

     • Miriam Robern

     @miriamrobern So, an interesting thing I've found, especially in Sci Fi/Fantasy, is that publishers look at word counts. Multiple publishers I've heard from said that a Sci Fi/Fantasy book needs a certain word count because they put the same amount of money into bigger books as smaller books, so bigger books are worth more. And readers will pick up a bigger book before they will a smaller book that costs the same because then they feel like they're getting their money's worth.

     It's fucking capitalism destroying everything. It's not about the story, it's not about the writing, it's not about the breath and voice of the words. I's volume. Content. I hate it.

     One publisher actually said "Ursula K. Le Guin would never get published today."

     Think about that.

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     Miriam Robern (miriamrobern@dice.camp)'s status on Wednesday, 17-Jul-2024 03:21:15 JST Miriam Robern

     in reply to

     @DivineKestrel There *are* spare novels out there. You know, like: all of Hemingway. It's totally valid!

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.