Random Rants

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 3.03: Toronto TVLTwT/IWTVTwT Version.

Story time: I started a book about 23 hours ago and just finished it. Also in that time I slept for 10 hours, spent time with family, was at work, etc. Anyway, I enjoyed the book (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda). But it felt like it flew by, so after I finished I looked up the word count because what are pages? Pages are meaningless. I only function in word counts anymore.

The estimate I found was 58,580. My immediate reaction was “oh, that’s why. That’s nothing!” But what a shitty response. Because no. That’s not nothing. That’s a whole. Damn. Book. An entire novel! And Fic authors regularly bust out 30k, 50k, 100k, 150k words. AND THEY DO IT FOR FREE. WHILE WORKING AND LIVING THEIR LIVES.

30k fic = Animal Farm by George Orwell

50k fic = The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

75k fic = Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

100k fic = To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

150k fic = The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

200k fic = Moby Dick by Herman Melville

250k fic = Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling

300k fic = A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin

350k fic = Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

So if you’re feeling a bit downcast because you can’t write that 50 chapter epic or your latest WIP is “only” 2k and it still took you ages - that’s amazing. Seriously. Not everyone is naturally wordy or prolific. And you can say a ton with just a few hundred or thousand words.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory = 30k fic

Of Mice and Men = 30k fic

Breakfast At Tiffany’s = 24k fic

For those writers who discredit themselves because they feel they aren’t writing the novels that others might, you’re still writing a novella, my dears. You’re still putting time, effort, and passion into something. Well done.

I can’t find a word count online. But DuckDuckGo tells me that in English, you get an average of 500 words per page.

So it’s about 1500 words, give or take. I cry every fucking time I read it, and I have read it many times.

Novels and novellas and fanfics of that length are great. But if you’re the shorter type—

—know that part of my heart stands forever on an empty hill in a fictitious city in California in the year 2026, crying for a fictitious child who never caught a ball, and it has been crying on that hill for over twenty years.