<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/capture1.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-6337" title="Capture" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/capture1.jpg" alt="" width="301" height="641" /></a>Here's the handy little properties box from Word for the book I'm now writing. It tells me a few useful things.
<ul>
	<li>I'm over 18,000 words into a book that will probably come out around the 120K mark (in other words almost a sixth done)</li>
	<li>I've been working on this book for 6059 minutes. Which means about 100 hours, or four days solid (note you will lose that statistic if you save your work under another name)</li>
	<li>Something has driven me to look at the Properties box instead of writing some more words this morning.</li>
</ul>
People often ask about the 'workflow' of writing a book. Do you know the story from beginning to end? Do you blast ahead regardless of any doubts you may have about what you've written, planning to fix the issues later?

The honest answer for me is: it depends. No two books are the same. I tend to adapt my working method to the story itself. Very linear projects are easier to manage. Those that flit between different points of views, locations and say time slots demand more planning.

<!--more-->What I realised about this project is that I'm now moving from the first act into the second. In other words I have what sets off the narrative; now I need to set down its future direction.  This is a dangerous point in the evolution of any story. You need to be sure of the way ahead. Otherwise you run the danger of heading off down an unwanted byroad, and wasting a lot of time and effort on a dead end.

How do I try to guard against this? Simple. I go back to the beginning of the 18.5K words I've got here and read them again very carefully, making sure they fit and point me in the right direction. I'm not obsessed with word counts. I won't care if I come out of this process with fewer words. Sometimes fewer words mean progress. But I need to know my launchpad for the book is in the kind of shape I want before taking the story any further.

I always end up doing this with a book somewhere between 15K and 30K. I often end up doing it again around the 70-90K mark too. For me it's good discipline. Writing is only partly about words. It's also about focus and control. That's what I'm looking for now.