Seems difficult to carry out word count on a text using Libreoffice, after that text has been saved. Only possible to do count before text is saved??
I use the word count without problems, with or without saving a Writer document. The count can be displayed either dynamically at the bottom of the screen using the FIND toolbar, VIEW > TOOLBARS >FIND on my Linux LibreOffice system.
A fuller display of statistics including word count is found on document properties FILE > PROPERTIES > STATISTICS on my system.
What system are you using? Are you storing the documents using normal .odt files?..