Um, so how long is a novel? I don't mean a big, overblown contemporary novel of the "the old dog looked at the horse and the horse looked at the old dog and they knew that the night was cold and sharp and the trees knew it too but they did not look because they did not have eyes to look" variety, but, say, The Great Gatsby or a carefully crafted Raymond Chandler novel. Are they much larger than 50,000 words?

A novel is generally at least 70,000 words. Most novels are closer to 100,000 words. A mass market paperback of about 350 pages or so is probably a 90,000-100,000 word book.

He's right in that 50,000 words, while actually much longer than a novella (which is more like 30,000) isn't quite a novel. (Unless you write really short romances for Harlequin, which are about 55,000.)

He's wrong in that 50,000 is a great first draft. It's something to build on. And it's an accomplishment.

I don't get why he cares. Most of the people who write in their spare time, NaNo participants or not, won't get published. What does it matter if a whole bunch of people want the support and the encouragement Nano provides to get them started on something they may really enjoy, but which might be a little scary to attempt alone? Writing doesn't have to mean publishing. It doesn't even have to mean posting fic.

Writing is just writing, and it can be as enjoyable and valuable as any other hobby. And I'm willing to bet at least one or two NaNo people *every year* end up with at least the bones of what will be very good novels.

The Great Gatsby

48,852, according to the Cambridge Critical Edition, which oughta know.

(Also, because this amuses me: if you google "Great Gatsby" and "word count", and then exclude "-essay" because you forgot to get rid of all the buy-a-term-paper-online sites at the first pass, the number you get is 50051, which seems remarkably close... even though it originates in a much-plagiarized Cracked Magazine rant about over-long Wikipedia entries. If you google "Great Gatsby" and 50051 to confirm the number, you'll find that it's the middle piece of the ISBN number of the only paperback edition that was available for many years.)

I'm listening to AmyLiz on this one since she's an author that I've, you know, actually heard of.

Perhaps we should change the old adage to "them as can do, them as can't post nasty things in LJ about those who are trying".

My book was very short at around 50k. And it took me a year to put that shit together. I don't know how deb does it. She can put 70k words together with one hand tied behind her back and the other petting a new kitten.

Literary novels are a little different. There's more leeway there, lengthwise.

So are collections of essays, Allyson.

Publishing is a money-making endeavor, obviously. You calculate book printing and paper costs as well as what you can *charge* for a book. So a mass market publisher wants romances or mysteries or whatever to come in at a certain length, not only so they know how much it will cost to print them, but how much they can reasonably charge. You can't charge $7.99 for a 50,000 word novel.

I didn't mean to kill the thread.

Um, books are good! Whatever length they are.

I’m intrigued with this fast-writing idea. Scientists work in much smaller chunks of simple, descriptive nonfiction, usually 2000-5000 words for a journal article. Nothing very deep. But perfectionism and self-doubt still make it hard for people to get started. So I’m wondering if it would work to get a group of graduate students together (and some faculty, as good models) and each agree to write an article in 72 hours. You wouldn’t have to worry that if it isn’t perfect because, really, no one could write a perfect article in 72 hours. If it sucks, it's probably because you were in such a rush, not because you suck. But now you have a draft, and that’s the hard part.

But now you have a draft, and that’s the hard part.

Exactly.

Timed writing is usually a good thing. Of course, it's usually small bits, like ten minutes, but if you just *write* and don't worry about what you put down, at least you have something to work with.

::drags out tired truism, blows away dust::

You can't edit a blank page.