Writing Progress and the Non-author

It's interesting when authors tell non-authors about their works in progress. Sometimes it's met with blank looks, polite nods, or a strange awe, like they've just stumbled into a party to find Jessica Chastain dancing with King Charles. They don't understand the specifics and view the author as a strange creature with odd behaviors and annoying vocabulary.

And I think it's a natural curiosity that makes them ask their questions. Maybe it's because they secretly want to be a writer, or they've never believed authors actually work. Their questions are usually of the general variety, some just curious if you're still writing, others just being nice and feigning interest, while still others wonder about how much work you're putting into a book. They honestly have no concept of how many words it takes to write a flash fiction piece when compared to a novel.

Helping Them to Understand

They can usually understand when you say I submitted six short stories this week to various publications, or I've queried a handful of agents about a novel project, or I've edited half of my rough draft. That's fairly easy to comprehend and to quantify. The disconnect happens when you talk about how many words you've written in a given day. Telling them you've written 900 words or 6,500 words means nothing to them. They likely would react in the same way to hearing either number. "Oh, that's great." Certainly, they understand one is more than the other, but in concrete terms, they have no idea what it means with regard to progress.

Writing Progress and the Non-Author

For non-authors, the word count is hard to conceptualize. They don't understand that 250 words make up a single double-spaced typed page or that the average novel hovers around the 80,000-word mark (though obviously this is not a hard and fast rule, and length can vary greatly depending upon the genre and author). You have to put the writing progress and the non-author in perspective. Put it into terms they can understand.

If you put it into pages for them, they understand. It goes against everything my author mind sees as progress, but in order to put it into terms the non-author can understand, I typically let them know how many pages I've written.

Writing Progress and the Non-Author

So, because of that, I'll say I had a wildly successful day yesterday and added twenty-eight pages to my WIP entitled 'The After'. That equated to 6,900 words. For you and me, fellow authors, we'll just keep the word count between us.

Don't forget to leave the light on; some of us are still writing.

Write ON!