45,369 words.

Of course I’m not going to gauge success on the number of words I’ve written. Neither am I going to proclaim it ‘finished’ when I hit a certain number. It’s finished when the story is told.

Crossing the 45,000-word mark this morning, though, was a bit of a happy moment as I’ve set myself a vague 90,000 word aim (target is too strong a word, I think), as conventional wisdom appears to be that the count that most publishers are looking out for is somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 for a first-time novelist.

Reaching 45,369, with half of the story told, then, means that I’m pretty much in line to get there without making it unsaleably long, or so brief it would fit in a pamphlet. It’s 50.41% of 90,000 words.

So, what is 90,000 words in terms of regular book print? Well, looking around on the web most people seem to estimate around 10 words per line, with 25 lines per page in the average novel. So that would be 250 words to the page.

On that basis 90,000 words would run to 360 pages.

It’s not an exact science, of course. If you have a lot of dialogue you’ve probably written fewer words on each line with more lines overall, but it’s interesting to do the maths.