Thursday. Chilly and grey.
Woke up to find that I had been repurposed into a structural component of a cat pile consisting of myself, two coon cats, and The Best Pink Ball. We were all so comfy, I went back to sleep for a while. Who knew being a foundation could be so relaxing?
Vertical now, but going about a bit slowly. Well. Nothing on the schedule but one’s duty to the cats and writing.
A question arose regarding how many words equal a page, and that is one of those questions that seems to be perfectly straightforward, only — it isn’t.
Because I began writing in the Age of The Typewriter, and because Habit is a Powerful Thing, I write on an 8.5 inch by 11 inch word processor page with 1 inch margins all around, double spaced.
The Word of God is that, on average, a page set up in this fashion contains 250 words. If someone asks, I can break that down further, but at present, I’m under-caffeinated.
Note that the above has to do with manuscript pages.
If by “pages” one means “pages in a published print book” — I have no idea how many words will equal a page. A publisher (trad or indie) can play a lot of games with final pages — increase the font size, decrease the font size, widen the margins, reduce the margins, increase the leading, decrease the leading — those leap to mind. Also, yanno, is the book published as hardcover, tradepaper, or mass market? So there’s no real correlation between manuscript pages and final published pages.
Ebook pages is a whole ‘nother thing, considering that the reader has final say on, oh, size of type, which affects page count.
And this? Is why I report words written, which, as we have discussed before, is an accounting system with its own inbuilt problems, but less than, oh, say — pages.
And now? I believe I will have some tea. And maybe breakfast.
What’s your plan for the morning?
Today’s blog post title comes to you via Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London.“
“I saw a werewolf drinkin’ a piña colada at Trader Vic’s.
His hair was perfect”
A line that always, and improbably, reminds me of my grandmother, who had a souvenir glass from Trader Vic’s at Atlantic City back in the day.