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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.