Cheating.

I'd like to get something straight. Not that anyone's accused me of this, or anything, because they haven't. But during WriMos, something that's really common is to stop using contractions, or use lots of flowery description, or switch hyphenated words into two separate words.

I don't do any of that.

Sure, I've done the occasional "Have not" instead of "haven't", but it's usually to fit the character, not to get my WC up.

The way I see it, is if I have 50K, but only 45K of actual words, once I eliminate all the "cheating", I feel like I've failed.

I want to write a novel that's got all of the right parts. I don't want to go through and have to change every "do not" into "don't"; for one, that'd get so boring, and for another, I'd hate to see the WC go down.

I don't have anything against people who do this, of course. It's just not my style.

WC of the Day:

26,687 and rising.