Thanks, Craig! In the end, I feel it’s subjective, and therefore there’s no correct answer besides doing what works best for each individual. For *me*, if I focus on word count, I feel overwhelmed by the mess that I then have to clean up, and I’m not comfortable publishing for the sake of publishing. Not that everything I’ve published (at least online) was stellar, lol…

But, you raise a point that reminds me of something. Indeed, in the *business* world in particlar, there is a famous study about quantity vs. quality where they gave two groups distinct instructions when making something. One was to shoot for quantity, the other quality. In the end, the quantity group actually produced better quality products, which was an unexpected result. I beleive it may also have been an “inividual artisan” vs “group / assembly line” type study, actually. It was a highly interesting, counter-intuitive, and often cited in business articles, usually (I believe) in reference to the concept that, if you get too hung up on quality (at least in a manufacturing setting), you don’t move forward. Whereas, if you focus on churning out your widgets en masse, you wind up inventing ways of making them better. You also encounter mistakes in your process sooner and apply corrections. That sort of thing. Groundbreaking stuff, actually!

BUT… does that apply to writing? I guess one could use that as an argument, although I’m not sure it’s an apples-to-apples comparison. It’d be like trying to write the same story time after time. You might get great at telling one story, but would it apply to your *craft* in general? I honestly don’t know… I suspect it would not, *unless*, as you’re experiencing, it helps you learn.