A word about word counts.

This won't be a terribly exciting blog post. Feel free to skip. This is for anyone who's keeping up on my Million Word Count Insanity and wants to keep me honest.

With the rewrite of Playing With Fire underway, it makes tallying my 2009 word count a bit complicated. Some chapters are just being tweaked, others completely ripped to pieces, and about twenty chapters will be completely new material.

The word counters at the right side of this blog will reflect two different things. The "Playing With Fire" counter has the overall word count for the book...finished/revised chapters, new material, etc. As I revise chapters, they'll be added to the total word count.

The million word count tracker is a bit more complicated: I will only be adding new words to that, which can be a bit tricky to calculate, seeing as how I'll be slashing/burning as well as writing.

So, in the interest of full disclosure and being completely honest about my 2009 word count, here's how it's going to be tallied:

1. Newly written chapters will be counted normally, since those chapters start at 0.
2. If an existing chapter is just tweaked - fixing prose, adding material, etc - I only count the difference. i.e., a chapter starts at 2,000 words, but is 2,300 words when I finish it, I only count 300. This isn't 100% accurate, because I may have deleted 700 original words and written 1,000, but that's just way too damned complicated to calculate. I'd rather err on the side of being too conservative. That, and...
   
3. If a chapter is totally rewritten, it'll be counted completely, even if a few bits of existing material are saved. Since that means a few hundred existing words being counted now and then, #2 and #3 will most likely balance each other out.
4. If a chapter is partially rewritten (retaining more than 500 words of existing material), then it will be calculated the same as #2. Again, erring on the side of being too conservative.
   
5. What if a chapter ends up shorter than it started? Given that these chapters are a bit spartan to begin with, I highly doubt that will be an issue. If it happens...I'll figure out how to calculate it, but at this point, I am almost certain it won't, so I'm not even going to bother working it out.

So there you have it. I know, terribly exciting...as I said, I just want to go on record for those who are trying to keep me honest. I am not taking any shortcuts with this annual goal. When I hit a million words, I don't want it to be on a technicality.

And for those of you who slogged through this mind-numbingly OCD post, you will get your rewards in heaven.

And by "heaven", I mean, the end of this blog post:

Tim Kelleher...
Hugh Jackman...
And...

Yes, loyal blog minions, a new face on this blog...

Robert Downey, Jr...
There. Words and men. The important things in life.