Whoot! deb! I have got to ask, because I've never written a novel, how many words in a decent length one?

have just written another 3600 words of new novel that makes nearly ten thousand words and nearly fifty pages in three days for god's sake someone send help

No such thing as good length, Sail. Depends entirely on the market, the genre and the writer. Minotaur likes the Ballads books to be between 70K and 80K.

If I keep writing at this rate - and I think that may be what's happening, since I'm basically channeling this sucker - I'll be done in a month.

Depends entirely on the market, the genre and the writer.

I guess I should have been more specific. I was thinking of 250 pages as "decent." So, 70-80K sounds about right.

The thicker a book, the higher the cost of producing it and the higher the retail price on the book. My Word program, which defaults to novel submission formatting, averages 235 words per manuscript page; of course, I tend to use a lot of longish words. Call it a flat 250, and you get just about a 300-page manuscript - not the final printed book, the manuscript - at between 70K and 75K.

I'm still coming down, here. I think maybe this particular book has wanted out for, oh, 28 years or so. Right now, I'm fucking stoned on it.

It's only rock and rolllllllllllllllllll...

Damn...

I think if it's much shorter than 40 or 50K, they call it a novella instead. There's no upper limit as long as someone is willing to publish it, but I think those impressively long fantasy sagas come in around 200 to 250K. I'm shooting for 100K, mostly because it's a fairly typical length for a single title historical romance, and if I didn't limit myself I'd never shut up. I seem to have a limitless capacity for subplots and detailed backstories for secondary characters, major and minor. One of these days Ima write a fantasy saga just so I can let it all hang out for a change.

I don't think I've got a novel in me. I've got words that want out, but I'm finding the drabbles and an occassional poem seem to be pretty much enough to satisfy my muse. Could be, too, there's just nothing that has really grabbed my muse and shook her up and said "fucking write something, bitch!" It could be there, just hasn't surfaced yet.

I sometimes wish I had something shorter than 100K in me, just to make the gratification a little less delayed.

Heh. I think that's my muse's problem, Susan; she's very much Id driven. She wants results and she wants them, NOW. If I can ever convince her to just hang in there and wait, it will all be worth it, I might actually get something novel length out.