Not sure if this in the right place, but I'm putting it here anyway. I think my first but must have around 20,000 words, I started writing in school and got carried away, I used to write during break and lunch, the story I was writing was rubbish, although I did get a B in my narrative and descriptive assignments in English. I'm aiming for this new book to be 80,000 words, but I'm not sure now that'll turn out, I've written just under 2,000 words so far. How many words was your first book?
My first "book" was probably around a couple of thousand words. I wrote in on my dad's work computer when I was like 8 or something. I guess technically it was a short story, and it was probably ripped off of Star Trek, and I don't think I actually finished it, but to my prepubescent self it was grander than War and Peace. My first actual 'real' book was about 80,000 words and it wasn't much better than my other first book. I never actually tried to publish it and it's probably still kicking it somewhere on a 5 1/4" floppy at my parents place.
I'm actually still editing my first book that I wrote three years ago. I too was shooting for 80,000 to 100,000 words but ended up with a little under 50,000. I guess I'm better at writing novellas
The first real thing I wrote was about 40k. I'd written things before that, but none of it was ever really serious. The first novel I wrote clocked in around 87k in the first draft (only draft, I think?). The next three were each around 90-92k upon first draft completion, then pared down a little over subsequent drafts (though none of them have reached "final draft" status). My current novel is around 6.5k so far, and I'm in the midst of Chapter 2. We'll see how it goes.
First draft of first book: 180k Second draft: 150k Third draft: 120k See a pattern? Not that it helped. That book sucked, and by shortening and tightening it all I did was make it suck faster and more efficiently. Call it a bad book that made no attempt to be good by adding any asides or distractions from its odious premise. Of course, I thought it was the shit at the time and anyone who rejected was a idiot. Ah, to be 20 again!
Not counting things written as a kid and things abandoned halfway through, my first complete book was 103k at first draft, 99k at second draft and looks like its going to be about 107k at third draft, then it will go through Beta edits and line edits and probably come back down to sub 100k. I'm currently working on the first draft of my second which is projected to be about 70-80k )Incidentally I've moved it into general writing - book discussion is for discussing books by other authors ie things we've read)
My first book, which I began in 5th grade, was 500 pages long with the default formatting applied by WordPerfect circa... Well, whatever damn year I was in 5th grade. If we assume an average 500 words per page, thats' a quarter of a million words. It was a little too long. Edit: All the books I read were 500 pages long! 5th-grade me (6th grade by the end) didn't realize the number of words on a page in a printed book and the number of words on a page in WordPerfect did not necessarily line up. To be perfectly honest, 5th grade me didn't realize these things were measured by word count instead of page count. I legit thought it needed to be 500 pages long.
My first full length story was about 180K. I'd written a number of stories that stayed between 50 and 100K as a child on my dad's only computer, but I decided to write something harder in college. In hindsight though, it was way too long. A quarter of the story was unnecessary. I haven't finished another full length novel yet, but I should be able to extrapolate from what I've done so far. I've discovered that it's better for me to write with way too much detail and repeat myself several times. This gives me options later when editing and I chose a path then. Most of the short stories I've written for contests here have a first draft about twice the length of the finished product. Based on my outline and what I've written so far, my next first draft should come in around 300K and finish somewhere around 150.
I was the same way. When I was a kid, Goosebumps books were about 120 pages long, so that's what I aimed at. I'm not even sure Lead Edge Word Processor for DOS even had a way to count words. I didn't realize that the number of words printed per page on those old dot-matrix printers was not the same as a published work.
The first book I finished and published was 83k. I had actually started a different book and paused it at 72k in order to write the other one.
My first draft was about 77,000 words. I'm toying with a second draft now, which will inevitably be longer. For some ungodly reason, most people shorten their work in the second draft, thereby removing everything worth reading and leaving behind only the plot. Ugh. I work by accumulation. My first drafts are all too skeletal; I need second and third drafts to pack on some meat. And skin and fur and everything else that makes living breathing animals lovely to look upon and even to treasure. At least, that's my ambition.
I only wrote one more or less finished story, first draft, (the plot sucked, in retrospect), which came out at around 62k. I didn't get to second draft to see how many it would be then . For my current WIP/stories, I edit almost all descriptions in after I've finished the scene/chapter/story, so that elevates the word count. On the other hand, I cut about one fifth, comprising clunky word choices, and tighten it all generally. And then add where I skimmed over stuff at the first pass. I come out with more words than the first draft.
