When I started writing Ravenor, I was almost positive it was going to be a short story, probably less than 10k long. Now, as you can see from the word count metre, it's edging towards my predicted grand total and I am dismayed to find I'm nowhere near finished. I'm now guessing it's more likely to be 20k. This is...well, it's not bad, but I had hoped to be finished and ready to publish by now. I'm not the world's fastest writer and when I see the finishing line moving further and further back, I get discouraged.
That's not to say I won't finish Ravenor, only that I wonder now why I bothered setting a target word count. Why not just write until the story is done, rather than worry about length? I suppose length matters if you're planning to publish traditionally or via epresses, but if you're self-publishing there are no guidelines on minimum/maximum word counts. I bought an indie book recently that was about 1k and it wasn't any less enjoyable for it, so why did I worry about hitting an arbitrary length or, indeed, exceeding it?
Lesson learned: from now on I won't assign targets like this to my stories. Whether they end up being 10k or 100k, as long as I feel I've told the story, it doesn't matter.
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