Do word counts count?

I've got fiction writing class again tomorrow. The first day of a new term, in a new year and I'm thinking 'Does it matter that I've written less than 1000 words during the Christmas holiday?' ... and the correct answer is yes ... but it's also no.

Yes, because I feel my obligations to The Book hanging overhead like one of the darker clouds that lurked about as I heaved bags of horse poo around this afternoon. Of course nobody made me start The damn Book in the first place, but I've started and somehow, sometime I mean to finish it. On the other hand, what am I thinking? The power I'm using for my laptop, the ink cartridges in the printer and the paper.... all to please myself. How extravagant. How many thousands of mss end up in the bin or clunking back through letter boxes every week, every year? And how many published books join the remaindered queue, car boot sales and recycling skips? In my favour at least, I did get something down.On the flip side, should I even be trying?

The no answer to the question is because in the last three weeks I've written quite a lot more than that, admittedly on this blog and commenting on others, but I'm reading over what I've read and making attempts to edit and I've been convinced by Sarah (bless her) that it's essential to get words on the page - any words.

Without a deadline I'm hopeless - like a garden to renovate or reconstruct, materials to order, bulbs and plants to get in before the weather changes, a meeting to get to. I need to develop the habit, stop thinking of writing TdB as selfishness, as a luxury. Kids have grown up, dogs have been walked and fed, cat ditto (well, the second of those) and it's a question of sod the load in the washing machine waiting to be hung up, the wobbling heap of ironing, the clouds of dust, mud in the hall  .....So that's that alright then. Now, where did I put that laptop....

Of course, after the first class of the new term tomorrow I might feel quite different. I might feel crushed and humiliated, not by the other people in the room, I hasten to add, but because it'll focus my mind on the reasons I'm there and I'll look back over the weeks of holiday and wonder why on earth I didn't use the time better; think how many pages I could have added to the paltry 61 I've got so far. I'll try not to dwell on the fact that I've written more than half the number I've got in TdB in only 3 weeks, but will I succeed? Maybe. Maybe the exercise we'll be given in class will be an abject failure. An occasion when the words don't come, when everyone else in the group is scribbling furiously throughout the allotted time, while I chew the end of my biro,then listen, entranced and despairing to their perfect, witty, rounded prose. And a lot of them really have the ability to do that, believe me.

It's been like that some weeks in the past, but somehow I feel this time might be different. I might be different, because this time my count's going to be 11000+ words. Never mind that they haven't moved my heroine further along her trek to self-confidence, that the little scenes I've got in my head are still there, rather than on paper. The fact remains that I've got those words and they're out there, published, irretrievable, on the Net.


Question:  Do Virgos over-analyse?
Answer:  I'm still too busy thinking about this one to come to any conclusions at the moment.... natch!