Word count got away from me AGAIN

Recently I was talking about my inability to estimate the word count or even chapter number of my prose, and usually I guess wildly too low. Not a big deal, but could be frustrating when it comes to planning purposes, when you have a lot more work to account for than you thought! For example, The Hemingway Trip, my current WIP fanfic about Steve Rogers and Howard Stark’s friendship in the midcentury post Steve’s retirement in Endgame, grew to several times longer than I expected, with what I then guessed was 10,000 words rather than 5,000, and 8 chapters up from a proposed 4. But I was finally on the last chapter, so I was confident I knew where it was going to end up.

Well, guess what? I had to break the final chapter into two. Now there’s going to be NINE chapters total— GOD HELP ME IF THAT CHANGES —and probably more like 12,000 words.

WHY AM I SO BAD AT ESTIMATING THIS? 🤣 I’ve written several hundred thousand words of fan fic total at this point— you’d think I’d know my own writing habits better than this at this point!