COUNTING, COUNTING, COUNTING

Okay so I have officially become obsessed with word counting. I have really let that dang agent do a number on my head. Even after researching word counts for my favorite novelists and seeing that some of their books appear to have the same number of words...I am still going nuts over this. I keep wondering...if I have 218 double spaced typed pages for my novel does that mean that a printed version, single spaced, would have the same number of pages, more pages or less pages? Is it okay to have a "novel" with only 42,000 words or does this automatically make it a "novella"? Not that I'm against publishing a novella, but there seems to be some kind conspiracy against agents representing them.

I feel like a women without a country. My tale is way too long to be considered a short story, but perhaps not long enough for a debut novel (I'll come back to this) and although it could be considered an okay length for a novella...there is little market in the publishing industry for novellas. When researching "debut" novels...I came across several articles stating that MOST and I have emphasize MOST...debut novels are at least 50,000. Geeee that's only 8,000 more words I have to conjure up for a story that I feel is complete. If I'm going to add more wordage I guess I'll have talk about Frank's athlete's foot problem or perhaps the horrible case of acne that Lisa had while in college. Perhaps the length of the curtains in all the rooms and every item of clothing worn, right down to their skivvies, should also be mentioned.

I'm in a quandry that's for sure. I'll try to get this all worked out today, make a decision and then implement a game plan...if need be. That's my "final answer Regis".