Before I began blogging on Hive I took up another hobby: book writing. I wrote two novels, a novella and several nonfiction books. Only a few of these were good enough for me to admit I was the author 😅 It was good practice though, and certainly helped me to develop writing fluency. One thing I remember reading in those days was that 80,000 was the target word count for a novel. I found this so very funny. Thought of all the great writers whose books fill libraries. Did Conrad count the words (Heart of Darkness, 19,500)? Did Hemingway (Of Mice and Men, under 30,000)?

When I'm blogging on Hive I find a good short story can easily come in under 800 words (I guess that's flash fiction). A research article can exceed 2500. The goal in writing, for me, is to say what I want in as few words as possible. It often takes a lot of effort to cut a piece so that it's effective, yet efficient.

I find your graph helpful in that it seems to give permission to write long articles. Sometimes I wonder, is this too much information? The next time I write a research article (planning one now) maybe I'll feel free to explore ideas a little more thoroughly. Or, maybe the graph won't have any effect at all. Basically, when I'm done, I'm done :))

Thanks for the graphs. Very interesting (how many words in this article😃?)