Usually after I finish a book, no matter how much I love it, I feel it was too long. Sometimes, I don’t understand why we can’t say things in simple, short ways. I love the idea that if you can’t say it in a simple way, then you probably don’t understand it yourself.

Seth Godin had an interesting post on this today.

Something that comes to mind is the book that Tim Stevens is working on. He keeps talking about his word count and how it has to reach a certain number of words to be done. Do publishers tell you how many words they want in the book? If so, that is TERRIBLE. Why not just write the book and say what you want to say. Having a contract with a required word count in it would encourage the writer to add extra junk that doesn’t need to be in the book and ultimately wastes my (the reader’s) time.

Just some thoughts. What are yours?