Today, during the continuation of my current dry spell, I remembered, "When submitting a manuscript to a publisher use a 12-point, non-proportional font (Courier - YES; Times Roman - NO!)."
Also, the word count a publisher wants is not the word processor word count. Rather, take your final document and count the printed pages and then multiply the number of pages by 250 in order to get the word count.
For example, if you print your document in 12-point Courier and it is 372 pages, a publisher (my sources allege) would consider it to be 93,000 words (372 pages times 250 = 93,000). A publisher is actually interested in how much physical space the book will take up. The sentence, "Dad laughed." takes up an entire line, but it doesn't really matter that it's only two words. So the rule, "they" say is, Count Pages Not Words.
But I also remembered that these word count rules apply only to words that are actually written which brings me back to bum glue.
It really is the true secret of writing.