There are few things more obsessed over by writers than word count: required word count, in-progress word count, goal word count per day/week/month, words that were cut, words in the final version.
So I love Daniel Torday’s essay in the newest Glimmer Train bulletin, “The Secret Lives of Novellas.” It begins like this:
The Great Gatsby received some truly awful reviews when it was published. HL Menken called it “no more than a glorified anecdote” and felt its characters were “not quite alive.” Edmund Wilson said much the same. Fitzgerald spent a good deal of time writing letters apologizing for having written an incomplete book, and the main source of his contrition was this: he felt the book was too short to be accepted as truly great. Years after its publication he wrote to legendary Random House editor Bennett Cerf that the book “was a light little volume barely touching 50,000 words,” and as a result “it was a rank commercial failure.”
Torday goes on to discuss an Amazon feature called Text Stats, which—if you haven’t heard of it before—may well distract you for the rest of the day.
Check out the full essay by Torday, or view the entire Glimmer Train bulletin.
Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in digital media strategy for authors and publishers. She is the publisher of The Hot Sheet, the essential newsletter on the publishing industry for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2019.
In addition to being a columnist for Publishers Weekly, Jane is a professor with The Great Courses, which released her 24-lecture series, How to Publish Your Book. Her book for creative writers, The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), received a starred review from Library Journal.
Jane speaks regularly at conferences and industry events such as BookExpo America, Digital Book World, and the AWP Conference, and has served on panels with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund. Find out more.