A question that keeps many a writer up at night: how many words should you be writing in a day?
Everyone has a different answer to this oh-so-very personal question. Obviously to a degree it depends on what you write. If you’re writing a pitcture book you obviously don’t need to churn out 2000 words a day – but the revisions, oh the revisions – that’s what’ll kill you.
But what about #YA or #fantasy novels – those things can stretch to over 100,000 words easy. If you’re only squeezing out a hundred words a day on one of those bad boys, you might need to rethink your plot lines.
Type A writers like myself were fascinated when @writers_write published an interesting table a few years ago containing the daily word counts of 39 famous authors; I’ve also seen similar tables posted elsewhere over the last 5 years.
Some of these word counts seem reasonable. I’m not a particularly prolific writer (I’m more racehorse than long distance runner) but 500-1000 words on a topic for which you feel inspired sounds about right.
If you want to make a career out of writing something quite chunky, aiming somewhere around the Stephen King mark is probably a sensible play. He’s quoted as saying: “Only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before 2000 words”.
When I delve into my WIP #YA novel, I aim for this level of productivity. When I achieve it (and yes, some days I do – honest!) I feel like I’ve actually made proper headway. I can see my imaginings come to life on the page. And frankly, I’m proud. So again, this figure makes sense in context.
But some of the word counts, to me, are just plain bonkers. Michael Crichton apparently writes 10,000 words a day. Yes, you read that right: TEN THOUSAND WORDS A DAY. Now, obviously I’m not doubting Crichton’s writing chops (which are serious and profound) but my god one has to ask: how?! And... why?
I think if I somehow managed to churn out 10,000 words in a 24 hour period (and yes, now I’m giving up sleep and snacks and toilet breaks cause I seriously can not understand how else I could make that figure a reality) what I would manage to write would frankly be garbage.
However, that’s me. The devil in this figure, it seems, is in the detail of the writer himself – apparently Crichton is big on rewrites – and thus suddenly his number makes a little more sense in such a context. For us mere mortals however, I think anything between 1000-2000 is serious progress made.
But on some days, like today, even 1000 words can feel like a stretch. Hemmingway apparently said something pithy about writing being a well that you don’t want to bleed dry – and he only wrote 500 words a day. Sounds like a good enough reason for a cuppa to me.
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