I was fooling around looking at the word count of my novel the other day and I stumbled across a number of amusing articles contending that 120,000 words is some kind of magic number that one was unwise to exceed, especially as a first or second novel writer.

My favorite quote so far is:

“Word count limits can seem like they stifle artistic flow, but they exist for a reason.”

Uh, not really.

This is 2020. There are front list books. There are back list books. There long and short list books. But, there is no inherent relationship between word count and quality and I don’t care if the author is a newbie or Dostoyevsky.

The fact is that duration or word count might well be inextricably bound to the depth and complexity of the writer’s vision. If ebooks and contemporary printing technology has brought us anything it should be freedom from arbitrary limits respective to word count and the like.

So, if some stodgy old editor tells you differently, feel free to ignore what they say.

Only the author (and his or her trusted editor) can say whether a book has too many words (or too few).

To say otherwise would be to go back to the 20th or 19th century.

Let’s not…