Who makes these rules, anyway?

Seventy-thousand words. Did you know that? This is the minimum word count for a novel. I only recently became aware of this.

Now...we've known each other for a while at this point. You've pretty well got me figured out, I'm sure. What has this information--paired with Microsoft Word's word count feature--done to my brain and to my ability to write?

Sheesh.

Seventy-thousand words.

Might as well say it's one-million. WHOSS has 74,518 words, not counting front matter or back matter. Or anti-matter. Or...red matter.

New entry in Brave Front, which, by the way, stands "complete" at 38,486 words. Including chapter titles. And probably footnotes. And page numbers.