The Perk of Using a Word Count
I started writing my first novel when I was fourteen years old. Like all first novels written at such an age, it was a piece of shit. It also took me four years to finish. There were several reasons for that, of course.
First and foremost, I had no goddamn idea what I was doing. I'd never written anything longer than four or five pages, and most of those had been essays, not fiction. Self-doubt is a real killer in such endeavors and was a constant antagonist during the time I made my first foray into fiction. More often than not, it won. When you don't know if you're doing something right, it happens. I've written a decent amount of fiction since then, mostly short fiction, but the experience transfers quite well.
In addition to inexperience, I also lacked any sense of a plan. I started writing this piece-of-crap novel with no outline or plan in mind. Writing in that fashion, at least for me, usually leads to a number of false starts, masses of tangents and pointless subplots, and loads of superfluous passages. Since then, I've gotten a handle on my own writerly psychology (know thyself, says the old maxim), and I know I work best when I have at least some idea of where the story is going, particularly the ending.
Above all though, the reason the book turned out to be a pile of crap in prose was that I lacked any semblance of writerly discipline. When I hit a stumbling block, or started to feel like I was not good enough to write this story, I'd just stop. And it didn't matter how long I'd been at the desk (I used a desktop in those days). The second an inkling of self-doubt crept in or my anxiety over any line of prose started to act up, I'd say, "Screw it," and walk away.
The end result was a hideously lopsided, unevenly written hot mess of a first novel--a piece of work that had taken me four years of my life to write.
Was it worth it? In the long run, absolutely. I decided after finishing that awful piece of shit that I actually needed to learn how to do this thing called, "writing fiction." I also knew that if I ever wanted to take another shot at writing a novel, I needed to become more disciplined about it. Very few full-time pros, who made their livings from publishing novels, published one novel every four years. So I had to learn to write, not necessarily faster, but certainly more efficiently and consistently.
What to do though?
It took several years of web searching, YouTube watching, and How-to-Write book reading until I found the perfect answer to this problem. Many writers, the ones I admired and studied anyway, all had a routine, a regiment if you will, of daily writing work they would do. Some were a bit more disciplined about it than others (get up at a certain time, make their beverage of choice, get to work, don't get up until you're done, etc.), but nearly every author had one thing integral to their routines: a quota.
In essence, every professional writer--that I ever came across--set themselves a block of work they had to get done that day, by hook or by crook. In some cases, the quote was a number of pages (these authors, for the most part, came from the generations that still used typewriters). Stephen king, for example would assigns himself the task of writing six pages a day (which roughly equates to about 1500 words a day). For Ray Bradbury, he aimed for about four to five pages a day (1000 to 1200 and some words a day). Diana Gabaldon usually aims for about 1000 words when writing one of her Outlander books.
Since my aim was to become a pro (eventually), I decided to adopt this. I settled on the goal of writing 1000 words a day. It was a minimum I frequently heard thrown around and aimed at for many professionals, so figured I'd best join the club. Since then, no matter the project I'm working on (particularly during the drafting stage), I shoot to write at least 1000 words a day.
Admittedly, I don't always succeed. During the bad days, I'm lucky if I can get 100 words written. However, there are also days, just as infrequent, when I exceed my word count. On a couple of occasions, I've even gotten double the work done.
All this being said, what benefit has using this methodology for getting words on the page provided me?
The main one is that discipline I so badly lacked in my younger days. Setting myself a daily amount of work to be done, every day. This means that I'm always in touch with what I'm working on every day. The material is always touched upon, thus remaining fresh in my mind, every day. And this persists until I have a first draft completed.
Secondly, but also important, it divides up the labor into manageable amounts. Writing anything of quality is no easy feat, and the idea of writing a novel must loom in the minds of many as a laborious task, simply due to its length. The prospect of having to do that much writing is probably what keeps so many people from even making the attempt. Non-writers believe that a novelist can simply plop themselves in a chair, laptop in front of them, and churn out a best seller in a matter of weeks or even days (and real writers laugh behind their backs). You can only get a mammoth of a project completed a little bit at a time.
At a 1000 words a day, if you could do that 100% consistently, by the end of a year, you'd end up with either two 150,000+ word manuscripts (not unheard of), or one 365,000 word novel, which is about 3/4s of the total length of The Lord of the Rings. The point is that if you work on something big a little at a time--play the long game, if you will--eventually the daily pages will add up to something worth reading. Even if your first draft isn't fantastic, at least if you work on it a little at a time, by the time you've gotten to the end, you'll have something to rewriting.
Finally, having a word count has also helped me push past my own perfectionist tendencies and get work finished. No matter how long you practice an art, there'll always be a lingering sense of doubt about your own ability to do anything good. Having a daily goal--a block of work you have tasked yourself with doing--however, can help you push past those doubts. And if you believe that what you've written previously isn't of sufficient quality, that's okay. You'll get another chance to improve it when you hit the rewriting phrase. As many writers have noted though, you cannot fix a blank page, and you can't improve something properly if it isn't complete. Using a word count, you can get over the hang-ups of perfectionism and get that work done..
Of course, my experience is my experience. What works for me won't necessarily work for you. Simply setting aside a chunk of time doesn't work for me (it's too easy to procrastinate that time away for me). But having a set amount of words to write does. This is what works for me. But you should do what works for you; always keep in mind the only absolute that exists in writing: everybody does it differently.
First and foremost, I had no goddamn idea what I was doing. I'd never written anything longer than four or five pages, and most of those had been essays, not fiction. Self-doubt is a real killer in such endeavors and was a constant antagonist during the time I made my first foray into fiction. More often than not, it won. When you don't know if you're doing something right, it happens. I've written a decent amount of fiction since then, mostly short fiction, but the experience transfers quite well.
In addition to inexperience, I also lacked any sense of a plan. I started writing this piece-of-crap novel with no outline or plan in mind. Writing in that fashion, at least for me, usually leads to a number of false starts, masses of tangents and pointless subplots, and loads of superfluous passages. Since then, I've gotten a handle on my own writerly psychology (know thyself, says the old maxim), and I know I work best when I have at least some idea of where the story is going, particularly the ending.
Above all though, the reason the book turned out to be a pile of crap in prose was that I lacked any semblance of writerly discipline. When I hit a stumbling block, or started to feel like I was not good enough to write this story, I'd just stop. And it didn't matter how long I'd been at the desk (I used a desktop in those days). The second an inkling of self-doubt crept in or my anxiety over any line of prose started to act up, I'd say, "Screw it," and walk away.
The end result was a hideously lopsided, unevenly written hot mess of a first novel--a piece of work that had taken me four years of my life to write.
Was it worth it? In the long run, absolutely. I decided after finishing that awful piece of shit that I actually needed to learn how to do this thing called, "writing fiction." I also knew that if I ever wanted to take another shot at writing a novel, I needed to become more disciplined about it. Very few full-time pros, who made their livings from publishing novels, published one novel every four years. So I had to learn to write, not necessarily faster, but certainly more efficiently and consistently.
What to do though?
It took several years of web searching, YouTube watching, and How-to-Write book reading until I found the perfect answer to this problem. Many writers, the ones I admired and studied anyway, all had a routine, a regiment if you will, of daily writing work they would do. Some were a bit more disciplined about it than others (get up at a certain time, make their beverage of choice, get to work, don't get up until you're done, etc.), but nearly every author had one thing integral to their routines: a quota.
In essence, every professional writer--that I ever came across--set themselves a block of work they had to get done that day, by hook or by crook. In some cases, the quote was a number of pages (these authors, for the most part, came from the generations that still used typewriters). Stephen king, for example would assigns himself the task of writing six pages a day (which roughly equates to about 1500 words a day). For Ray Bradbury, he aimed for about four to five pages a day (1000 to 1200 and some words a day). Diana Gabaldon usually aims for about 1000 words when writing one of her Outlander books.
Since my aim was to become a pro (eventually), I decided to adopt this. I settled on the goal of writing 1000 words a day. It was a minimum I frequently heard thrown around and aimed at for many professionals, so figured I'd best join the club. Since then, no matter the project I'm working on (particularly during the drafting stage), I shoot to write at least 1000 words a day.
Admittedly, I don't always succeed. During the bad days, I'm lucky if I can get 100 words written. However, there are also days, just as infrequent, when I exceed my word count. On a couple of occasions, I've even gotten double the work done.
All this being said, what benefit has using this methodology for getting words on the page provided me?
The main one is that discipline I so badly lacked in my younger days. Setting myself a daily amount of work to be done, every day. This means that I'm always in touch with what I'm working on every day. The material is always touched upon, thus remaining fresh in my mind, every day. And this persists until I have a first draft completed.
Secondly, but also important, it divides up the labor into manageable amounts. Writing anything of quality is no easy feat, and the idea of writing a novel must loom in the minds of many as a laborious task, simply due to its length. The prospect of having to do that much writing is probably what keeps so many people from even making the attempt. Non-writers believe that a novelist can simply plop themselves in a chair, laptop in front of them, and churn out a best seller in a matter of weeks or even days (and real writers laugh behind their backs). You can only get a mammoth of a project completed a little bit at a time.
At a 1000 words a day, if you could do that 100% consistently, by the end of a year, you'd end up with either two 150,000+ word manuscripts (not unheard of), or one 365,000 word novel, which is about 3/4s of the total length of The Lord of the Rings. The point is that if you work on something big a little at a time--play the long game, if you will--eventually the daily pages will add up to something worth reading. Even if your first draft isn't fantastic, at least if you work on it a little at a time, by the time you've gotten to the end, you'll have something to rewriting.
Finally, having a word count has also helped me push past my own perfectionist tendencies and get work finished. No matter how long you practice an art, there'll always be a lingering sense of doubt about your own ability to do anything good. Having a daily goal--a block of work you have tasked yourself with doing--however, can help you push past those doubts. And if you believe that what you've written previously isn't of sufficient quality, that's okay. You'll get another chance to improve it when you hit the rewriting phrase. As many writers have noted though, you cannot fix a blank page, and you can't improve something properly if it isn't complete. Using a word count, you can get over the hang-ups of perfectionism and get that work done..
Of course, my experience is my experience. What works for me won't necessarily work for you. Simply setting aside a chunk of time doesn't work for me (it's too easy to procrastinate that time away for me). But having a set amount of words to write does. This is what works for me. But you should do what works for you; always keep in mind the only absolute that exists in writing: everybody does it differently.
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