My son recently
graduated with a degree in Drama (gaining a First!), and for his
dissertation he had to write, perform, direct and produce a one-man,
40-minute play. Essentially the piece was about an angsty student
being counselled by an artificial intelligence psychotherapist (my
son's own, recorded, disembodied voice). In one section, he riffs
about numbers and how your life is defined by numbers - some which
identify you (National Insurance number, phone number); some you wish
were bigger (salary, bank balance, IQ); some you might wish were
smaller (age, weight).
It got me thinking.
Writers deal primarily with words, of course, but we can also find
ourselves rather obsessed with certain numbers.
Firstly, word count.
I don't think I've met a writer yet who is not obsessed with word
count. Many set themselves daily or weekly targets - eg 1000 words a
day, 5000 a week - to hit their required novel length of say 90,000
to 100,000. Writers will joyfully report they've had a fabulous day
and managed to put down no less than 2,786 words. Or they might moan
about writer's block and be advised by friends to just try to get 100
words a day done - there, there, don't fret, it all adds up. Every
journey starts with a single step; every novel starts with a single
word.
Word processing
software helpfully shows word count of the current document at the
bottom - look, I've written 243 words so far in this piece. I've been
a member of groups 'racing' each other - cheering each other on as we
report weekly wordage. Oh yes. We do love tracking our word count.
And then, for
published writers and especially those making a living from writing -
there's another set of numbers we always want to know. I'm talking
about sales figures - both units sold and royalties earned. For most
writers we'll need to wait till the end of the month to receive
statements showing how well our books sold two months previously, but
self-published writers will be able to see more up to date figures,
showing sales almost up to the minute. Every end of month I transfer
sales figures and royalties earned onto a spreadsheet, which also
allows me to track totals by sales period and by book, and calculate
average royalty per copy sold, and other interesting, juicy numbers.
Finally there's
another number which I think is probably the one published writers
check most frequently. I know I do. I'm referring, of course, to our
books' rankings - their chart positions on Amazon and other
retailers. Especially when we have a new book out, or a book on
promotion, we might check its ranking several times a day. Even
though we know perfectly well that Amazon only updates rankings no
more than once an hour, we'll still check more frequently than that
to see if anything's changed!
So, we may be all
about putting words onto a page, but we find certain numbers
fascinating. We should probably spend more time on the words and less
on the numbers, but they're addictive, you know? Anyway. This article
is now over 550 words, which is the usual length for our blog posts,
so now I can save it and go check my rankings. Again.
