Tag Archives: Dictionaries

When your novel comes up short

Posted on August 18, 2012 | 36 comments

I just finished my latest novel.

Yay! Right?

Umm, well not really.

For the first time in my life … My novel came up short.

I normally write huge, sweeping epic novels. The last one I had to hack up into five novels. The one before had three parts. My mind just thinks “big”.

This time, I tried to center my mind on a one-week timeframe. I carefully plotted it out, and assigned word counts. I thought it would be close, but I didn’t expect to be WAY OFF my target word count.

Do I have stuff to add? Well, yes, thank goodness. There are a few things that I found I needed at the end that will need to be introduced earlier on. The problem is, I need about 12,000 words, and I imagine the additions will only total to about 1,000 words. 11,000 more to go.

Yikes again.

I’ve edited 23 pages, and have added 230 words. I figure the total added for general editing will be about 2000 words. That’s 9,000 to go.

I don’t want to write unnecessary scenes just to make word count. I wrote tightly. Everything is spot-on.

Maybe a little too spot on.

Has anyone else ever had this problem?

Well I don’t like it. Nope. Not at all.

Writer-Talk Tuesday: Creating a Writing Calendar (kayedacus.com)
Novellas: The Word Count (angelofosmond.wordpress.com)
How to Write A Book (writesbymoonlight.wordpress.com)
Search and Destroy Those Weak Words (whatifyoucouldnotfail.typepad.com)
Hitting 10K in Camp @nanowrimo.org challenge| Make Something happen! Kicking Word Counts butt! (sylviahubbard.com)
My Year of Writing Dangerously – Guest Post by Russell Blake (ebarnes23.wordpress.com)
5 Ways to Meet a Deadline (writingishardwork.com)

36 Comments

Posted in General Writing Tips, Senseless Ranting

Tagged adding to a novel, Dictionaries, how many words in a novel, not enough words in a novel, Word, Word count, writing

Confusing Me and I… Ahhh the never ending quandary of a writer

Posted on March 3, 2012 | 20 comments

There was a great article on Dictionary.com this week about confusing “I” and “me”

Click over here if you’d like to take a look. http://hotword.dictionary.com/youandme/

Misuse of these two words is really common. I hear people do it all the time. Even in my own house, which I try to keep as grammatically correct as possible.

The words “I” and “me” get my husband and me into a rumble once in a while. He will correct one of my sons, and then I will correct him, because my son was right. In our culture in the USA, there is so much “overcorrection” of the word “I” that it is starting to sound right when people use it incorrectly.

Let’s take the first sentence in the previous paragraph. “The words get my husband and me into a rumble.” It sounds wrong, doesn’t it? I actually typed it incorrectly the first time (yeah, I am admitting it) because “I” just sounded right. I then went back and corrected it.

How can you tell if you are wrong? Take out the other person, and leave the sentence the same. Let’s try it.

The words get my husband and me into a rumble

The words get me into a rumble.

The second sounds correct, so we did it right. In this example, “My husband and me” is correct. Now, let’s do it incorrectly

The words get my husband and I into a rumble.

The words get I into a rumble.

Oh! That didn’t work too well, did it? In this case “My Husband and I” is incorrect. If you are ever unsure, just take out the second subject and see how it works out.

Need an example when “I” would be correct? Well, ask and ye shall receive!

George and I should have dinner sometime

I should have dinner sometime

That sounds good. Okay, how about “Me?”

George and me should have dinner sometime

Me should have dinner sometime.

Oh, Yuck! That didn’t work at all. So, in this example, “I” is correct.

The problem is, that “You and I” has been so OVER-CORRECTED, that the word “I” almost always sounds correct. Even to me. In the first example, I really wanted to write “My husband and I.”

This is a case of English being an evolving language. As a writer, you need to make a choice to follow the natural progression of language, or to adhere to “correctness”.

Honestly, between us… your reader probably won’t even notice.

The questions is— which camp your editor/publisher is in?

Ahhh… the quandaries of a writer.