It came to me today that I must have published around a million words of fiction, with 11 full-length novels and 4 novellas behind me. I’ve certainly written more than a million, if you also include all the unpublished books (too many to count, one or two of them very long indeed).
Of course, there’s a lot of doubling up. Words like ‘the’ and ‘but’ and ‘a’ and ‘of’ and ‘and’ no doubt feature a lot.
I dare say ‘blood’ has cropped up once or twice. Together with related words like ‘killer’, ‘wound’, ‘dead’, ‘death’, ‘murdered’, ‘murderer’ and ‘murder’.
I’ve probably used ‘indeed’ more than I should have. Likewise ‘undoubtedly’. And, yes, ‘likewise’.
‘Shadows’ have played a consistent part in my stories. There’s been a fair amount of ‘quaking’ and ‘quivering’ and ‘shivering’; in fact, all kinds of ‘convulsive’ reactions.
‘Exsanguination’ dominated one of the books (Summon Up The Blood). While ‘vengeance’ has, I think, played a significant part in several others.
Some of my novels were translated into foreign languages. So the words I wrote became other words, the meaning of which I do not know.
If I’d got a pound for every word I’ve published, I’d be a millionaire. But I didn’t so I’m not.
Anyhow, all this talk of words has reminded me: the word count for the novel I’m working on at the moment currently stands at 74,253. The target length is around 100,000.
So I’d better get on with adding words to that and stop writing this.