As you sit down to write that story that’s been burning in your mind, it is not unusual to ask, “Is this idea any good?” As questions go, few others have this much power to kill your enthusiasm stone cold dead. Yet, the truth is, there’s no such thing as a good or a bad idea in writing – especially creative writing.

What matters far more than the idea is the execution of the idea. It turns out the question was never “is this idea good enough?” The question was “am I willing to put in the effort to finish this one?” because that’s the kicker – only the effort you put in matters.

The great idea you had that you never started will be outshined a million times over by that one daft notion that someone followed through on.

In short, yes, your idea is good enough. Go and write a story already.

Our fourth writers’ blog carnival (November 2025) is open for submissions. The theme for this month is “your writing strengths”. Last month’s (but still open and running in parallel) is Work in progress (Oct/Nov)

What are your writing strengths?

We all have aspects of our writing that we excel at (or feel like we do) and those that require more effort – struggle even.

What are your strengths as a writer? (Here are some aspects of writing, but I bet there are ones I have not even thought of.)

Why do you think you excel at your writing strength?

Is it due to practice, natural talent, life experiences, a good teacher, your writing group, or something else? What has life, chance, or dedication done to grant you this skill?

What current weaknesses are you trying to turn into strengths?

For me, editing is a whole new game. I don’t feel confident in my editing skills as I do in some other areas. I owe everything I have figured out to feedback from the Thanet Creative: Writers’ group. I get a lot out of being part of a writers’ group.

What is a weakness you are trying to turn into a strength?

I look forward to reading your posts

I’m excited to see what you all write. Remember to link to this post and ping us with your entry. This post may close for new pings sometime after the month is over (or not). As long as it is open, late submissions are welcome.

This post was first published on Author Buzz UK in 2024.

How many words should a novel have? That’s a question I’ve seen many times. Just recently, user Burty Burtman asked in the forums, “How long is a novel?“

The answer is that for novel word counts it depends. Any numbers you can get are, at best, rule-of-thumb with many exceptions.

To give you a better answer, I asked Google, “How long should my novel be by word count?” I asked follow-up questions for some genres. Below is a summary of what the Internet says about how long a novel should be. There was generally little consensus and so a lot of notes.

For the average, I took the mean of the upper and lower limits and then the mean of those two values.

I did NOT ask AI. As far as I know, all sources were written by humans.

1. This genre is strictly defined by word count must be within 50k-55k
2. This genre was somewhat nebulously defined with fewer suggestions
3. If this is your first novel aim nearer 100k but if established 250k may be possible
4. Make every last word count – established writers may get away with longer novels
5. Not really a single genre
6. hard sci-fi may run as little as 60k
7. Genre Fantasy tends to run longer
8. Your Mileage May Vary
9. The shorter, the better it must be
10. Celebrity memoirs can be (much) larger
11. If you are really good and it is justified, higher word counts may be available
12. Varies by reading age
13. Varies by sub-genre/topic/niche
14. Varies greatly – do your homework first

Please share your thoughts, comments, questions, and examples that fall way outside the range in the comments.

I had a dyslexic moment and could not remember which weather I wanted. So I looked it up. Following the advice to “blog your homework”. Here’s the answer for next time I forget.

TL;DR: Whether or not the weather is good will decide if we go to see the wether.

Wether

Wether is a castrated goat or ram. It can also be part of a British place name. You probably don’t want this one.

Here’s a Wikipedia link if you want to know more.

Weather

Weather is the stuff that is falling out of the sky. Snow, rain, sunshine, clouds, gale force winds – these are all weather.

Here are some animals being unimpressed with the weather.

Whether

This is the speculative one. You use whether when there is doubt or choice. Whether or not you want to do this depends on what you are writing about.