Wednesday, March 19, 2008

60,000 Words

Just before bed the other night, I caught a special called Human Ape on the National Geographic channel. Comparisons between ourselves and current day apes were made, with a final evaluation on which group has better cognitive, verbal, and reasoning skills, etc. As you can imagine, though some apes are indeed impressive, our human race won out pretty easily.

But with all the fascinating discussion, what I found most memorable was mention of the fact that adult humans have the average vocabulary of 60,000 words. Isn't that something? 60k! And of course as a writer, I couldn't help but think on how that's the minimum number of words expected for a novel. And I think that's very cool!

...And speaking of novels, I finished the rough draft of mine yesterday! I'll soon begin edits and polishing, and hope to send agent queries over the summer. It's a great feeling!

Wish me luck, and same to you with all your written endeavors.

8 comments:

Rebecca Laffar-Smith said...

CONGRATULATIONS!!! You need to do much more celebrating. :-) First drafts are a major milestone.

I agree that it is very interesting to find out the various ranges of our language capabilities. It makes me want to run through my vocabulary to count all the words I know. lol The advantage with writing a book is that there are a lot of words we can use more than once.

Michele said...

Congrats, Janna! Here's to that big contract and lots of book sales. :-)

Smiles,
Michele

Melanie Hooyenga said...

Gah, can you imagine trying to write a novel with every word you know? You could barely repeat anything. Gives me tremors just thinking about it!

And congrats again!

Janna Leadbetter said...

Rebecca and Michele, thanks so much! YIPPEE!

Melanie - I thought the EXACT same thing. Crazy business, that is.

Travis Erwin said...

Congrats on finishing and happy querying. I'm about a month away and then I too will be fishing the water of publication with my latest novel.

Janna Leadbetter said...

Hi, Travis, thanks so much! And best of luck to you in your agent search.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't it feel good to write "the end"? Congrats on completing your first draft! Do some celebrating!

Janna Leadbetter said...

Thanks, Turk!