Pages

I read through my entire work of fiction so far.  I did it my old fashion way of printing the actual pages, hole punching, and putting them into a three ring binder.  I have chapters marked with tabs and it's a slim bit of writing about now.  I don't have it properly formatted with deep margins and double spacing but regular paragraphs filling pages.  I have to do it that way.  I have to read it from hardcopy.  I know, with all the electronic tools around I still struggle with reading on-line. (That is another story and it will be soon...you'll see).

I had all my words in a binder and was going to get started when there was a brief conversation about how much I had done.  I know what the word count is (about 17000) and I have researched to see if there is a way to translate that into paperback pages.  There are sites out there that will give you overviews and details about that kind of thing.  I know...I looked.  There is something that helps me when I can see something tangible that I've done.  What's a bunch of words?  Not much more than that, but if I can see pages - well, okay, maybe there is something to that.  Word documents of varying sizes don't translate into what I read so it's hard to make a comparison.  And I am constantly trying to see where I stack up.  Doesn't everyone wish I didn't!

I roughly calculated from the on-line research that approximately 250 words to one side of a page, so I have approximately 68 paperback pages with most books containing about 300 pages, more or less.  The conversation kept going and we were soon grabbing up one of the books I had and flipping pages to see what that would look like. 

Hmmm..."What chapter did you say you were on?" 

"Starting five."

"Look, this is page 68 of this book and it's on Chapter six."

"Oh, maybe my chapters are long."
"Maybe you need to go back to your own bit on Rules of Writing.  Didn't you have something about that in there?."
I had to smile because - yes - here I go again with thinking too hard about all the details...like pages, words, chapters.  Dante is great for pointing out what I already know but have conveniently forgotten along the way.

So, just so you can see, too...this is where I am....

Hopefully, I can get past the pages, words, chapter thoughts and get back to the business of writing a story.  But you have to admit, I can find the most creative ways to distract myself.

TT