I'd say writing the right words is much better than trying to meet a word count.

I don't word count unless there is a set limit (like a drabble). I write as it comes, sometimes pages and pages, sometimes a few lines.
My work weaves in and out of itself, lines of plot present themselves and I tease them out and work them through and sometimes realize that they have appeared in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes I re-read what has gone before and spend half an hour deciding on one minor change. Sometimes I splat a page or four and rehash the plotline.
And all this is why I never publish Work in Progress because part 3 today may be part 33 tomorrow and part 1 in two weeks time!

Edited at 2013-08-26 08:24 pm (UTC)

Ah, word count, a sometimes ticklish subject in the publishing world. As I understand it, most (book) publishing professionals go by estimated count... if the manuscript is in standard format, of 250 wpp for Times Roman, or 200 for Courier. Based on that, Sailing Dangerous Waters (410 pages) would be 102,500. However, I recently copied and pasted all chapters into one document, and the new doc adds one more line of text to each page. Now it has 396 pages. Word count based on this would be 99,000. Acual count from the computer, 115,684. When I get it edited, charged by the word, guess which one they will use!
Dave