just a daily update

I totally and unequivocally do not buy that modern fantasy novels are 120,000 words long on average. According to Word, Oraphan is currently about 76,000, meaning I'd be halfway to this, and not quite halfway to a bigger book which can be something like 200,000 words. They say that most books have about 250 words per page in a paperback...again, I don't buy it. Looking at what appears to me to be a standard length page in a history book I'm currently reading, it has closer to 500 words on the page. If it really is close to 250 words per page, right now I'm looking at my manuscript being already over 300 pages; that's not huge by any means, but not a particularly large fantasy novel. But mostly, Oraphan just doesn't 'seem' that long; yes, I'm going by gut feel, but I can take my time getting through 300 pages in a novel. Oraphan, though, wizzes by when I do my re-reads; I think Word is lying to me...that's it.

Why is this important? Well, because supposedly first time authors do better if their manuscripts are a bit shorter, so I'm trying to figure out just where I need to wrap up the first 'volume' of my work so that it makes a nice, sellable trade paperback. Otherwise I'd just write until I'm done...which won't be for awhile. Sometimes I feel like those hack writers who just write and write and write and never even really tell a story...like a modern TV serial or something...like BattleStar Galactica. Do all those episodes really give you more character development? Not necessarily. So I have to ask myself, am I just filling space, or are my characters actually growing, and in the way I want them to. For that very reason, I nixed about 2 typewritten pages yesterday. Bren just wasn't acting like Bren...but the fact that I had to write it to realize that in the first place leads me to believe I haven't been writing him as himself consistently throughout the whole thing. I have a feeling for each character, but sometimes that can shift or move, temporarily or more permanently...so, for instance, Glay just had a shift, but it was intentional...but Lemuel has developed over time in a way that may not have made sense from the beginning...

For a writer, my blogs sure are wordy and useless. That's why I'm trying to write fiction, and not blogs, I suppose.