I Don't Even Know 100,000 Words

Throughout my childhood there were several books that I reread so often I’m sure my mother would still cringe at the sight of them. Whether they involved the Berenstain Bears eating too much junk food or Sam I Am’s offers of green eggs and ham being rebuffed, I pored over their pages so often I practically had them memorized. One of those books, not my favorite, but still one that I adored, involved a lovable anteater named Arthur and his quest to win the school’s spelling bee. This story is going somewhere, I promise.

In all honesty, I remember very little about the book or its plot, and I couldn’t even tell you who won the spelling bee in question, although I assume that Arthur came out on top, as he often did, like a slightly luckier and more optimistic Charlie Brown. For some reason, the only line of the book that I can recall comes shortly after the teacher announces to his class that the spelling bee will be schoolwide, compulsory, and test them on one-hundred different words.

One girl in Arthur’s class, both dismayed at the challenge before her and resigned to her inevitable failure, uttered a line that I have never forgotten: “I don’t even know a hundred words!” I don’t know why I found that line so funny, or why it has clung to the lobes of my brain for nearly two decades, but it still wanders across my mind every now and then, always eliciting a chuckle.

When I started writing a novel in February, I understood just how ambitious a task I was undertaking. The first thing I did, of course, was try to find out exactly how many words I was expected to produce. I knew from friends that NaNoWriMo--which I have never and almost certainly will never attempt--required works to be at least 50,000 words in order to qualify as a novel, but that seemed short to me. Having read books as short as The Road and The Catcher in the Rye, and as long as Crime and Punishment, I knew that there was a very broad range of what could be considered novel-length. Still, I hoped that being given a rough estimate would put what I was about to attempt into context.

Gleaning information from various different articles on the subject, I learned that a novel was expected to be at least 70,000 words long, and most authors less verbose than Tolkien clocked in their work at between 90,000 and 110,000 words. Splitting the difference, I told myself that 100,000 seemed like a reasonable goal towards which to strive. At the same time, the very idea of writing a story comprising that many words sounded so insane I might as well be staring at a windmill and declaring it a giant. At that moment I asked myself, half in jest, do I even know 100,000 words?

Fortunately, when writing a novel you’re allowed to use words more than once, although hopefully not too often. And the mantra I repeated almost every day was encouraging: “It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be.” If I could produced 100,000 words that told some sort of coherent story, I would be satisfied. Making them good could wait for editing.

Tonight, I stumbled past that threshold. It was, fittingly, a very rough day of writing, where I struggled to write every sentence and immediately hated every word I put down on paper. But I hit 100,000 words and then a few more, and I am immensely proud of myself for doing so.

This is not a victory lap, although I did celebrate with sushi and chocolate. I’m not yet finished with my novel, although I’m hoping to complete it within another 10,000. Still, I am somewhat in awe that I have managed to see this project through even as far as I’ve gotten. Having given up on more writing projects than I can remember, this is an accomplishment that I do not take lightly. Just like Arthur beat the odds to win the spelling bee (probably), I beat the odds to type out 100,000 words. To quote another jovial fictional youngster, Bart Simpson: “that ain’t not bad.”