Word counts can vary wildly. Different genres have different standards. Different age categories have different standards. And, when you’re biggest struggle is balancing enough detail without making it seem like filler, it’s a lot of work to get your book “long enough.” At last count, the first novel in my series was about 55,000 words. As you can see by the graphic below, that’s well below the standards for an adult fantasy novel. And some people say, “Well, you do NaNoWriMo and that’s 50,000 to win so isn’t that enough?” But, what you write for NaNo is only a first draft. And, if you write like me, much of those 50,000 words look like this: ((Something happens here. And it goes like this. They talk about this but I don’t know exactly what is said. I need to describe the thing but I’ll figure it out later so I can move on.))
So, I have been working on beefing up my word count. I get help from my wonderful critique partners. For now, I’m taking a break on the first 2 books so I can continue on with the series. But, every once in a while, I’ll bounce back and add something or adjust a detail to help with continuity. Hopefully that will add to the word count. Once I get more into the series, I can do a massive editing session and start the publication process in a few years. If I can get my books at least to the 80K range, I can be happy. I have a long way to go, though.
