Lots of authors worry about the number of words they write per day. Some even post the tally on Facebook or Twitter as if they’re in some kind of competition.
And if they’re not writing at least 500 or 1200 or 2000 words or whatever quota they’ve set, they feel miserable. Why aren’t they working harder? Why are they stuck? What’s wrong with them? How come everyone else is racking up the pages?
If that kind of system works for you, fine. But I think too many writers believe that if they’re not actually physically writing a set number of words every single day, they’re not just slacking, they’re falling behind and even betraying their talent. Especially when they read on line about other people’s booming word counts.
How do they get caught in that kind of dead-end thinking? It’s thanks to the endless blogs and books that urge writers to write every day and make that sound not just doable, but the norm. Some days, though, it’s simply not possible. Hell, for some writers it’s never possible. And why should it be?
And if you can’t eke out your daily quota, the advice sometimes goes that you should at least re-type what you wrote the previous day. Well, even if I weren’t a slow typist, that’s never had any appeal for me, either, or made much sense. I’d rather switch careers then do something so mind-numbing.
I don’t urge my creative writing workshop students to write every day; I suggest they try to find the system that works for them. I’ve also never worried myself about how much I write every day because I’m almost always writing in my head, and that’s as important as putting things down on a page.
[Related: Need help editing your book? We can help.]
But aside from that, every book, every project has its own unique rhythm. While recently working on a suspense novel, my 25th book, I found the last chapter blossoming in my head one morning while on the treadmill at the gym. Though I sketched its scenes out when I got home, I spent weeks actually writing it.
Some people would call that obsessing. They’d be wrong. What I did was musing, rewriting, stepping back, carefully putting tiles into a mosaic, as it were, making sure everything fit right before I went ahead, because this was a crucial chapter. I was also doing some major fact-checking, too, because guns are involved and I had to consult experts as well as spend some time at a gun range. It took days before I even had an outline and then a rough draft of ten pages, yet there were times when I wrote ten pages in a single day on this same book.
The chapter was the book’s most important one, where the protagonist and his pursuer face off, and it had to be as close to perfect as I could make it. So when I re-worked a few lines that had been giving me trouble and found that they finally flowed, it made me very happy. I was done for the day!
And if I didn’t write a word on any given day or days, I knew I would be, soon enough. Because the book was always writing itself in my head, whether I met some magical daily quota or not. I don’t count how many words or pages I write a day, I focus on whether what I’ve written is good, or even if it has potential with revisions. That’s enough for me.
This guest post was contributed by Lev Raphael. Lev is the author of Writer’s Block is Bunk and 24 other books in genres from memoir to mystery which you can find at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Check out more of Lev’s work on his blog, Writing Across Genres.
Your style is similar to mine. I only write daily if I have a deadline. Otherwise, I work it out in my head while jotting down notes. But once a story takes root in my brain, I am a slave to getting it on paper. I find counting words distracting. My job is to tell the story, while letting my Creative juices flow, then edit, edit, edit…. I have a friend who wants every chapter perfect before moving on. He slaves over his work but has yet to finish anything.
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Reblogged this on Michael Seidel, writer and commented:
Lev says it all in here. Find out what works for you. I sit down to write everyday. Sometimes the output is small. I don’t worry; my mind is constantly working the scenes and the words to describe them. They keep. It keeps on flowing, sometimes as a drip, other times as a tsunami.
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I like the idea of “re-typing” when stuck.
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Reblogged this on Kim's Musings.
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NaNo is the only time I obsess over word count. Normally, I have my routine and know what and how many scenes I need to do. Sometimes, that’s 500 words. Sometimes that’s 3k. But I understand why some need that count. It’s easy to gauge. Good article to keep us in check.
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Reblogged this on The Reluctant Poet.
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Writing is more than just churning out X words per day.
When I have a story idea, I get the rough draft of it – like, just a couple of sentences with the main premise in it – down and then I go away and do something else. I’m not procrastinating, I’m working on the story, finding the characters, plotting the basic structure. That way, when I come back, the story flows well and the characters know what they’re doing.
Having said that, I do feel ill and out of sorts if I go more than a couple of days without writing something!
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