The main problem is that the new idea I have tends to be the one I love. I think of something, get very excited, outline it, and then I have another idea, and I move to it. Also, I tend to love more the novel ideas than the short story ideas, because longer works have more stuff in them and tend to be more interesting. But the short stories are easier to write and finish.

Basically I think that love and excitement is not really a good criterion for what people should write. I mean, you wouldn't want to write an idea you hate anyway. I'm sure some people try to write things they don't really like just because they think these are the things that sell, but I'm also sure they're the minority.

Thanks for your input as well. However, it's not like I didn't try writing short stories - I have half a notebook filled with such stories from when I had an attempt on the short story genre 3-4 years ago. And, to be honest, I never felt much excitement about short stories - I don't know why, but I felt mostly constrained by the fact I had to keep it short more than anything else, as my stories tend to be somewhat chatty and thusly long. That is, the original concepts I have in my head were all for novels and the short stories ended up being more exercises on writing than anything else. The topics I ended up with were mostly something that, well, seemed interesting but when writing it something didn't work out and it just didn't feel right. That's probably because I was practically forced to make up other circumstances that could be short enough, and these weren't as pleasing as my original ideas.
So I have an idea of writing short stuff, but I'm just not very fond of it -and these happened to famous writers too ; there are writers who became famous mostly by their short stories (Alexandros Papadiamantis is an example I'm aware of) and others who preferred full scale novels way more.
All in all, last time I tried, I wasn't satisfied of the results -maybe I should try again, now that some years have passed but I'm not sure I'll change my mind, because of the aforementioned reasons (feeling constrained by the length and not finding topics both short and compelling).

Glad that it worked out for you, with the prequel. I personally cannot do so with the novel I'll be currently concentrating on, as the hero has a totally normal life before the novel starts and most of the circumstances of the heroine's life will be presented in flashbacks in the main novel itself. But your idea seems good enough, and I might try to write a short-length prequel regarding another of the many ideas for novels I have in my head, the full versions of which have been postponed atm, as some will in their full scale present previous events less extensively than others... Maybe that'll work out, as at least I'll use heroes I'm "familiar" with and not something I just made up just in order to write a short story, as happened last time I tried to write something short...

Yeah, well, it started out as a short story. I outlined the plot, made some details about what happens where and started to write a scene. 2200 words later I noticed I'm still at the same scene and that's just the dialogue...

It may not end up that short after all.

This stuff thends to happen, I mean texts changing genres in the middle of writing. As a matter of fact, one of my ideas originally started as an entirely different short story, but when I finished writing, it had become the 1st chapter of not only a potential fully-fledged novel, but also one with an entirely different focus than the original short story idea. The fact that I left that unfinished as well is an entirely different story and has to do with the reason I posted here in the 1st place, that when I start writing something I might leave it unfinished because I tend to postpone the activity of actually wriring something.
Anyways, I think writing a short prequel on one of the other novels I'm already planning to write as a full novel will work better, because I won't feel like developping my subject way too much as the meat of the plot, so to say, will still be in the main novel I'd write later. And that's why I said this would mostly work in novels where I don't have many extensive flashbacks, or some characters don't get developped enough ; this would especially help in a new novel idea I had just yesterday, where 3 personages, relative to the main heroine, die either before the novel (2 of them, the death of which and further revelations about them would be revealed in flashbacks but I could write a prequel about their lifestyle before they died), or at the very beginning (a 3rd person) -but this method of occupying with characters other than the protagonists is surely way more prone to lead to what we'd call a spin-off than the previous method of a true prequel with the same protagonist. So I might try a bit of both and see what works better/ends up shorter ...
P.S. Btw, what is with most of you counting your number of words? I haven't counted till now how much I write in this way, but only relatively (e.g. 10 notebook pages) -does this help with something (e.g. other than NaNoWriMo) ?

With all respect, I find these kind of writings hard to read and concentrate. I mean lines with only speaches. I believe people need time while reading to picture what is going on. I make that happen with adding additional depiction. I think (again my personal opinion) your writing could be more flood if you had written it like this.

-------- EXAMPLE ---------
"You want me to wear what?" Aragorn asked with gloomy eyes. But Gandalf was determined. He insisted.
"This dress"
"It's pink. I don't wear pink" Aragorn rejected. He was slowly starting to get angry.
"Another color perhaps?" Suggested Gandalf.
"That's also a dress. I don't wear dresses"
Aragorn turned his back which practically ended the discussion. This night was special for him and he would dress up as he wanted. Even tho he knew Gandalf meant good, he could also be old fashioned sometimes.

--------- END OF EXAMPLE -------------

I prefer to read books that is more of that style. Of course that is my personal preference.

I should have mentioned that those lines are very barebones and do lack the additional info (who, how and why) and general setting. They're snippets from my personal notes and will not end up like that in the "finished product". I also shared most of those via twitter and it has 140 character limit.

And yes, I agree with you. Dialogue definitely needs additional info.

It's easy to count words when it's digital. It's the same as you counting pages. It's just a measure of how much you've done.

Word count did matter for publishing when I was writing. I imagine it still counts, but probably not for self publishing. Word count determines what category your story falls under (short story, novella, novel, ...), how publishers will look at your novel, and can determine payment. For example, I sold a 5,400 word story at 5 cents a word, so got $270.

I see, but then even when I'm writing digitally (e.g. non-fiction papers that need footnotes), I count pages because page constraints still matter in this case (e.g. a paper requiring 20 pages), even though I know the page count can be changed by such small things as text size, space between each line and all that. I guess it just seems weird to me to judge my work by looking at the word counter, especially as the word count involves such mundane words as "a", "the", "and" e.t.c.
I also thought that page count mattered more regarding what length category a book belongs to - I guess I might have outdated 20th century info on those things...
As for a publisher deciding how much to pay you just by the word count (and apparently not the quality), this seems absolutely bonkers to me -it's as if these guys think book writing is like shopping in the grocery store, and articles/books are to be judged by kilos or something! If I get around to finishing my novel, I should then find someone who would have more "normal" criteria on this stuff - but the whole question on how I should publish can of course wait...

Both the word count and the money per word are variable. :P

The best advice I can give to anyone aspiring to write is, write. No, that's not a joke. Try to write something every day. It doesn't have to be long, or fancy. It doesn't even have to be good. Just pick a topic and write. Maybe a few sentences one time, maybe a few paragraphs or pages another.

And it doesn't have to be about the project you are working on, either. You would be surprised what inspiration you can get simply from the act of writing. Don't get too caught up in what to write, or is it any good, or should I change this or that. Just try to set aside a bit of time each day and write something, anything. Short stories, poems, songs, jokes... the most important aspect of writing is to write.

That's my opinion anyways.

Word count and page count are quite interchangeable. The reason word count is used is simply because it's more well defined. Given a word count, a publisher can estimate a page count. Given a page count, the only way to know how many pages it will take in the printed book is if the writer formats the pages in a very specific way. Might as well use a word count. Anyway, the traditional way of counting words (used before computers were the common writing tool) was based on counting characters, and provided an approximate word count based on that. An actual word count is close to that. Sure there are words like 'a', but things average out.

I did much of my writing in the 20th century, and it was word count then.

Word count isn't used for payment for novels as much as it's used for stories printed in magazines, where the sales aren't directly related to the success of any single story, and using word count is a way to divide the money between the stories in an issue. Also there's no 'quality' issue; publishers don't publish what they feel is low quality. Quality also doesn't affect sales nearly as much as a the writer's name being familiar to readers, which comes from the quantity of work more than the quality. Known writers will get paid better rates, for this reason.

Payment for novels really isn't word count based, it's based on sales. Beginners often get a one time payment and never get enough royalties to get more, and I'm not sure how that price is determined. Publishers are more interested in having multiple books from an author than having a single great book, because multiple books are what establishes a writer and builds a fan base.

This thread was quite interesting to read as I have tons of ideas spinning around my head. I actually have a complete universe with magical laws, various power centres, major conflicts, historical events, all in my mind.

No wonder I can't concentrate.

Ah ok. Then I guess my info is way too outdated then, and might even come from the 19th century or something!

Phew - I had thought novels had become like freelance articles, the way the world is nowadays. As for publishers wanting multiple books, I guess that's why we have nowadays so many novel series with 3 parts, 7 parts e.t.c Most of my ideas are self-contained and don't need sequels, and out of those that could theoretically get sequels if they suceeded, they'd get 1 or 2 at most. I suppose that multiple self-contained books work in the same way in making a writer known though...

I'd recommend doing what I did and start to write it down. But a word of warning, though. If you can't concentrate now, just think of what will happen when you open the floodgates...

Or play a DnD campaign with some friends and see what characters emerge in your world. :)

Many fantasy novels started with a DnD session.