There’s no exact science to word count. In general, anything less than 50 words is a poem or a social media post, then under 300 is a complete thought, a wire news article, or flash fiction. Most of my robust blog posts are in the 600-700 range. My published essays are both just over 2,000, but I’d call anything between 3-5k a “long essay.” My favorite piece of creative nonfiction, my favorite written thing, rings in at 10,000 words. (It’s Brian Phillips’ “Sea of Crises.” Stop reading this and start reading that.)
I’ve been trained to think in word counts by my day job. But there’s a relativity issue there, where the difference between 200 and 700 words is much greater than the difference between 2,500 and 3,000.
What I’m asking is: How many words does it take to convey a thought? And it depends on the thought. My instinct is, word count is useless as a judge of ideas, but it’s useful in the same way that resting heart rate is useful. Since I’m 50 days in the hole what with blogging, and I’ve tracked my word counts that whole time, I know what I can vomit out on a Sunday between errands or on a Monday when I get inspired.
My first draft of the Supernormal post is just over 900 — not that far off from my resting BPM. What does that indicate? Maybe I’m not exploring this idea as far as I should be. If I added 300, 500, 700 more words of context, maybe that would indicate a good sprint rather than a breezy jog.
Obsessing over metrics feels bad. I’m thinking of this high-stim word processor I saw on TikTok a while ago. Every time it registers a keystroke, a little heart or a sparkle pops out of the character count tab. There’s razzle dazzle, there’s noise, there’s cheering and gold medals. Writers need some way of feeling like all the clacking away actually has some meaningful result. We write in coffee shops to be seen. We track page views. Anything to give our work a life outside of ourselves.
What’s much harder is deciding that an idea is “done,” that it’s “explained enough.” That you’ve done the best you can do.
One day, I would like to feel like I can string together 10,000 meaningful words that tell a story, describe something, make an impact. At exactly this moment, I’m going to shoot for 1,200.