Words Count

Confessions of a rhetorical sprinter

The following piece is one in a series of letters to my prospective granddaughter.

February 16, 2025

Dear Baby,

Seventy-thousand words: my going rate. It’s also what’s contractually stipulated for this one. Last night I took the various chapter files I’ve drafted and pasted them into a single file that now constitutes the first full draft of my next book (sans an afterword I have yet to write). This is one of my favorite milestones in the process: I’m done climbing the steep hill of generating a first draft.

I’ve gone longer (about 150,000 words for a textbook history of the United States since 1945), and I’ve gone shorter (about 50,000 for the minor project that will come out next month, a little book about famous Americans who had pivotal moments in their lives in New Jersey). But 70,000 is my sweet spot, where I end up most of the time. This makes me a sprinter; most of my books clock in somewhere around 200 pages. I kinda wish they were a little bigger, that I would have more stamina. Though I tend to like to read shorter books.

Everybody seems to prefer them these days. Especially publishers—the last few contracts I’ve had have been relatively insistent that I keep the length down as a matter of cost. It’s become easier and cheaper to include pictures (now a standard, and tedious, part of my process, which is coming next), and I sometimes wish the type was larger and the leading (space between the lines) was wider. The books published by the big New York houses are more reader-friendly than mine. But I’m now a second- class literary citizen. I’m just happy not to be in forced retirement.

I’m actually a little surprised it’s still possible to publish books. I imagine the day is almost at hand when AI will tell you pretty much anything you want to know the way you want to know it. (When I order old books now, I’m effectively getting printouts that are bound and shipped to me on demand—I suspect warehouses for inventory will soon be obsolete.) But for the moment, at least, the business of authoring is still a viable proposition.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a smooth stretch of road ahead in this particular run. Revising is a lot easier than drafting. My deadline to submit the final manuscript is August 1; I think I’ll be done before that. I’d rather not—it’s much easier to be working an an existing project than generating a new one. But I won’t get ahead of myself. In a way, that’s the whole point of this for me. Work is a way of staying out of trouble.

I realize that’s not necessarily the best way to get through life. You’ll have plenty to time to find yours. I hope to be around long enough to watch you jog uphill.