Hit 100,000 words in my fantasy novel and it totally changed how I see my own writing

I always thought I needed to hit some huge word count to feel like a real writer, you know? But when I finally crossed 100k last month (after 14 months of grinding), I realized the number doesn't matter as much as actually finishing a scene. What convinced me was looking back at my first chapter versus chapter 40 - the growth was way more meaningful than the word count. Has anyone else had a milestone like that change their approach to a project?

3 comments

3 Comments

miles_burns1mo ago

Reached 50k words myself and realized half of them were probably just me typing the same sentence over and over.

ryan_barnes1mo ago

Miles, that "same sentence over and over" thing is something I see a lot in my writers group. You mention hitting 50k and figuring out half of it was repetition. What kind of repetition are we talking about? Like you kept rewriting the same paragraph, or you were accidentally using the same phrases across different chapters? Because I went through a phase where I realized I described every tavern as "warm and smoky" about fifteen times before someone pointed it out to me. That moment changed how I edit now.

the_simon1mo ago

Oh man, that "warm and smoky" thing hits way too close to home. I caught myself once where every single character kept "raising an eyebrow" in my first draft. I think there were like thirty eyebrow raises across two chapters. What finally helped me was reading my whole manuscript out loud in one sitting. It took forever but I caught all those little repeats because they sounded so obvious when I actually said them out loud. Now I do that after every big revision pass and it saves me so much hassle later.