how many words

Susie was going around today growling '400 words, 400 words...' and I asked her why; and what she said was that she'd been reading a novel in which the main character is a woman who is writing a novel and attempts to write 400 words a day, and that in her opinion novelists who write about people writing novels are really talking about themselves and that it was quite tempting of course, but lazy and wrong and created a self-perpetuating circle of mythologising about mythologising (or something like that) - although then she sort of frowned and muttered something like 'excuse me, but my navel is more interesting than your navel anyway, it has better quality fluff in it', which I don't really understand, but I imagine that's because I'm not a novelist. Anyway, I went 'Oh, right' and then asked her how many words a day seemed right to her to write, and she said for God's sake, it had nothing to do with the bollocking word count (her expression!), it had to do with the content and intention and editing and placing and context and mood and stuff like that. And that writers aren't doing lines for punishment and counting them is pointless and punitive and that anyway, 400 words wasn't very much for a day's work. I don't really understand what all that meant either, but I thought it was maybe better not to ask any more. She seemed to be busy thinking. And then she stomped off into her room and banged the door.

I think I might borrow that book from her.