Every word counter has its quirks. Ours usually errs on the generous side. If you want to see how many words our counter thinks you have, you can upload your manuscript here for an official count.
- from NaNoWriMo's Word Count page.

If you're participating in NaNoWriMo this year and have been diligently updating your word count on the site (for bragging rights, or, in my case, to boost my region's word count so California: South Bay no longer trails Kansas or Holland & Belgium), then you probably know there are two ways to update it.

The first is the Honor System method. This requires John Q. Novelist to type a number into a simple text box - presumably the number of words he actually wrote (not the number he should have written or thought about writing) for his novel.

The second way is the Verified method. This requires Jane Q. Novelist to upload her manuscript as a plain text file to NaNoWriMo's word counter. They trust she's uploading her own manuscript and not one she found on Project Gutenberg.

During the first week of November, I updated my word count using the first method. It was only four digits, so it was no trouble. But by the second week, my count was five digits long, which was, I felt, one digit too many to ask my tired fingers to type on a daily basis, so I migrated to the second method.

Instead of entering that troublesome fifth digit, I converted my novel to a text file, hit the browse button on the website, clicked down through the various branches of the file directory, clicked back up after following the wrong limb, clicked down another one until I found the file, and uploaded my 15,051-word novel for counting. No trouble. Their word counter worked its magic and updated my word count to 15,049.

It was only off by two words, so I didn't give it a second thought. I blindly accepted the counter's "quirks". Although it didn't err on the "generous side" as they claimed, I wasn't going to worry about a pair of words that likely got bored while waiting to be counted and went joyriding instead.

But over the last week, every time I uploaded my novel to their counter, more words disappeared. Earlier this evening, I uploaded my latest version and the word counter claimed I had 30,003 words, which is nothing to cry about, but what you don't know is that I submitted a 30,057-word manuscript. A whopping 54 words were missing.

Something more than a mere quirk was responsible for their disappearance and I wanted answers. I spent the next two hours sleuthing. I searched everywhere for clues, but only found dead ends. It was only when I stopped to unload my socks from the dryer when the answer hit me. It was so obvious. There must be a word gremlin inhabiting the counter.

It may seem like a stretch, but it was a reasonable stretch, as I soon learned. A quick check of the The Observer's Book of Monsters confirmed my seemingly outlandish theory.

According to the book, the NaNoWriMo Word Gremlin lives in the counter's lint trap (apparently, the contraption was created using old Maytag parts). The creature hibernates eleven months out of every twelve, but awakens each November to feed on redundant expressions, decorate its nest with extra commas, and insulate its bedding with fresh interjections of laughter (ha ha, hee hee, ho ho ho).

There's no known way of killing or eradicating the gremlin, so the only actions a novelist can take to minimize word loss is to omit needless words and keep character laughter to a minimum, which is disappointing because I was looking forward to writing a comma-intensive prison break scene involving inarticulate convicts and canisters of nitrous oxide.

So, a word of advice to novelists out there: Always write more words than you need and beware of the NaNoWriMo Word Gremlin.