I used to check the page count constantly.
This was not helpful.
Still, I did it.
Write for twenty minutes.
Check the page count.
Move a paragraph.
Check the page count.
Make coffee.
Apparently check the page count again, in case the document had continued writing without me.
It never did.
Page counts are seductive because they turn something uncertain into a number.
Thirty pages.
Eighty pages.
Two hundred pages.
Progress.
The problem is that pages have no idea whether they are good.
They are remarkably supportive in this way.
A terrible scene occupies exactly as much paper as an excellent one.
Sometimes more.
I began noticing that the days when I watched the page count most carefully were often the days when I trusted the work least.
I wanted proof that something was happening.
The number provided it.
The story did not always agree.
A book can grow without moving.
Descriptions expand.
Conversations continue several lines beyond their natural death.
Characters explain things everyone in the room already understands.
The page count rises.
Everyone is exhausted.
Eventually, I had to admit that I was measuring the wrong thing.
The question was not:
How many pages did I write?
The question was:
Does the story know more than it did yesterday?
Sometimes the answer comes from three new pages.
Sometimes from deleting ten.
Sometimes from changing one sentence in a conversation and suddenly understanding why a character has been difficult for the previous six chapters.
This is frustratingly difficult to measure.
There is no counter at the bottom of the screen for understanding.
Story clarity: 73%.
I would probably check it constantly if there were.
So I stopped counting pages.
Not completely.
I am still a person with a document and basic curiosity.
But I stopped asking the number to tell me whether the day had been useful.
Some days the book becomes longer.
Some days it becomes smaller.
The good days are the ones when it becomes more itself.
I have no idea how many pages that is.
Good.
— D. Vaen