We try to write our story to our Heart's content but we are sometimes bothered by how long a story should be when it comes to traditional publishing and self-publishing.

A Writer who can fit a lot of necessary things to make the story more appealing with less words has a unique skill of story telling with quality. But depending on the Genre more words maybe necessary to add detailed descriptions or make used of good vocabulary to make it sound more poetic.

We only need to consider word count as a way to properly compress our stories as to what the Publisher may demand of us, but we should really write to our hearts content and after the first draft. We trim down the less relevant scenes of our story and use lesser words that will express what we are writing about.

Quality and Quantity should go together hand in hand in their respective use. We should follow what Literary Agents and Publishers demand of us in word count in the case of Traditional Publishing. It is a really a skill for an Author to compress or extend his or his story to its best form.