How much can you write in a day?

Discussion in 'General Writing' started by Goose, Feb 20, 2009.

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  1. architectus

    architectus Banned

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    I believe that goes with out saying. I mean, who is going to write 3000 words a day without trying to improve? Who is going to sketch 20 figures a day without wanting to improve?


    And if they show their sketches or writings to others, they will get feedback that should help them see problems they missed.

    However, I think even if someone wrote 2000-3000 words a day without consciously caring about getting better, they would improve. They would probably reinforce bad habits as well, like you said. I suppose the only way to not reinforce bad habits is learning what the bad habits are, and trying to correct them.
     
  2. inkslinger

    inkslinger Active Member

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    I have no specific goal when I write. I just start writing. I can write anywhere from 500 words to 5,000 words in a day. It really varies. I've even done around 7,000 in one day before. I felt so tired and drained afterward, though. If it's during an exciting part of the story I just find myself unable to stop. I stop whenever I feel like stopping. I usually listen to music when I write, drink water, and chew gum. I also usually write at odd hours of the night.
     
  3. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    i have to say this...

    i've been writing seriously and full time for decades and have never, ever counted [or cared] how many words i wrote in a day or a week, or whatever... why anyone would, is beyond me!

    it seems to be some sort of 'how big is yours?' contest for new writers, to claim they can write more/faster/longer than the other guy/gal, which makes no sense to me whatsoever...

    my best motherly/mentorly/editorly advice to you all is to concentrate only on how well you can write and never on how much...

    love and perplexed hugs, maia
     
  4. architectus

    architectus Banned

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    Many professional writers have a word goal they reach for every day. So professional writers care a lot about how much they write a day, especially if it is their only income. Words = cash for them.

    Like writers that make money on short stories. Each word is 3-15 cents.

    I don't see how they can not care about their page count. << I couldn't think of a way to say that with out a double negative, :p
     
  5. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    when you're under a deadline, of course it matters how much you can turn out in the allotted time... but that's not what this thread is focused on, is it?

    and even when i was working on a deadline for my magazine and newspaper columns, or for a client, or whatever, i still did NOT count words other than to make sure what i was writing fit the maximum/minimum requirements for the particular piece... i simply wrote what needed to be written... and i suspect most other pros do the same thing... not focusing on word count, but only on writing well and getting the thing done...

    sure, some of the bestselling novelists i've known, like bob ludlum, set themselves a daily page count [not words], but again, here we're dealing with new writers, not those who've been making their living at it... and when you're starting out, it's only quality that counts, not quantity!
     
  6. architectus

    architectus Banned

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    Is Bob Ludlum short for Robert Ludlum? If so, he is a great writer. I love Borne Indentity. I haven't started the second novel in the series yet.
     
  7. HadEnough

    HadEnough New Member

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    I have decide that because I'm really lazy, just writing when I feel like it doesn't work.
    I write just ONE PAGE, Every day of my novel, and its working slowly but surely.
     
  8. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I agree with Maia on this one too:
     
  9. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    yes... bob and mary were fellow westporters back in my 'old' life... at one of the arts council gatherings i held now and then in my home, he came up with the term 'pancake novels' in describing his own... i've used the expression ever since, to describe the kinds of books that, like his, are turned out like pancakes, with only a change of exotic locale and the mc's name to distinguish one from the other in the stack...

    he was a super nice 'regular-joe' kind of guy, not at all stuck on himself or his fame... i hate to see the 'business' that's been made of his name, with pancakes now being flipped by inferior writers... but if it helps keep mary solvent, i guess i can forgive that...
     
  10. Aeroflot

    Aeroflot New Member

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    What about correcting and elaborating after writing? Do you find it easier to write slowly and carefully over writing tons and heavily revising later on?
     
  11. Flozzie

    Flozzie Active Member

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    I've never counted words or hours. I just write when I feel like it, and then it doesn't matter how many words or pages I manage. As long as I'm happy with what I've accomplished.
     
  12. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    i don't have a problem with my work needing much editing or revising, so i just let the words flow at their own speed and type as fast as i can, to keep up...

    for others, i would think it's best to just get down what you're thinking and fix it later... if you slow yourself up by trying to make it perfect right out of the box, i should think that might inhibit your imagination and result in taking forever to finish anything...
     
  13. architectus

    architectus Banned

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    Maia, but sometimes I get stuck on a sentence. I can feel the right words are just around the corner, and I can't move on until I find them. It just happened to me about thirty minutes ago.

    First, I wrote: She stared off into the blotches of different hues of green, which had holes that the sunlight poked through.

    Those clearly were not the words I was looking fore. I rewrote it a few times, and five minutes later I came up with this.

    She stared off into the blotches of thick leaves as sunlight sporadically tore through the gaps.

    I am still not sure if I am satisfied with it, but at least I was able to move on and keep writing.
     
  14. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    whatever works for you is what works... period...

    that said, it's not usually a good idea to let yourself get so bogged down on a single sentence that you have to spend a long time working it over... tell yourself it's ok to keep going, that you can fix it later... and let the story keep flowing...
     
  15. Dr. Doctor

    Dr. Doctor New Member

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    I am usually pretty slow at writing, but I like what comes out most of the time, so it's fine with me. Don't really count how much I average a day.
     
  16. Beth

    Beth Member

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    I used to think like that, until the point I switched on drugs to keep me going... worst choice EVER! Now that I'm clean, I stop when I'm tired... 5 words or 5000. Health comes first. :rolleyes:
     
  17. HeinleinFan

    HeinleinFan Banned

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    Writers vary quite a bit in terms of how fast they write and how much they write a day. (I've done a lot of looking into this, believe me.)

    Some writers work three or four days a week but write 3,000 to 7,000 words when they write. That way they know they can finish a novel in about two and a half months (first draft at least) and can plan ahead a little.

    Steven King writes every day, a thousand words or more. I have tried this and found it useful for me, but that's just my experience. Of course, I could not always do the writing - but I managed 65,000 words in 11 weeks, and while much of it was unusable due to later plot tweaks, it was still good practice.

    Joe Haldeman, who teaches at my university every fall semester, writes slowly and by hand. He might manage 500 to 1500 words in a day, much of it good. He knows he can do a novel every three to six months, which works for him.

    Limyaael (yes, of the famous Rants) can write up to 4,000 words in an hour, and considers 5,000 words in a day to be about average. She is now very busy and writes less, but she used to maintain a writing pace of about 1,500 words for each of three novels (she was always working on another neat idea) and then 500 to 2,000 words for any short stories or novellas she was working on.

    I've heard of other authors who would write a single page each day. Just one. But it was nearly perfect - they had gotten to the point where they could trust their writing, and rarely needed to edit. So they might have only 300 words a day, but they knew that 295+ of those words would not need to be edited in any way.

    The most important thing is to find what works for you. Writers get better by writing. If you can only write in 10 or 15 minute increments three or four times daily, okay. If you can only find the free time three evenings a week, that's fine. If you are one of the really fast typers who can type 6,000 words in an evening, and you can manage to do this once a week, that's still writing and will help you to improve.

    The only real "success" formula involves writing, however and whenever you can - there is no single set of "correct" ways to do it. I don't know how much it helps me to take writing classes, but I do it - because I am enrolled at a very tough university and have trouble making myself write otherwise. Am I writing my novels? No. But I am writing essays and short stories, and improving all the time. (Well... in theory. I may have hit a plateau at this point. But you get the idea -- I'm practicing and keeping my writing muscles toned, as it were.)

    Good luck, everyone.
     
  18. TableTop.Paper

    TableTop.Paper New Member

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    I believe that the words and pages do not matter when it comes to asking yourself "am I trying hard enough?"

    You cannot count the pages for you already know that if you are writing down in a manuscript format you will get around 350 words a page. Also, books come in so many different formats that you can't say a book is bad because it has few pages even though the book is nearly 2 feet long.

    The words don't matter either because some of it will be dialogue which reduces word count considerably and increases the amount of pages a lot. If you count the words all it well you is how much you wrote.

    What really matters in the end is when you ask yourself "Have I tried hard enough?" and realize that over the week you have written daily and managed to dedicate enough time to advance your story and see that it is in fact getting done then you should tap yourself on the back. You know when you wrote enough and you know when you are not serious about it.
     
  19. Rei

    Rei Contributor Contributor

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    Tabletop makes a good point. It does feel great to bang out lots of work in one day. However, the actual amount isn't always the important part. In Stephen King's book On Writing, he has this little story about a writing who, when his wife came home and asked how much he had written, or something along those lines, he said he had written seven words, but didn't know what order they went in.
     
  20. C.M. Maish

    C.M. Maish New Member

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    How much I write in a day is always all over the place. I guess it all depends on my state of mind or something. It's weird. There are days where I can write for hours and loose track of time but then there are days where I can only write seven sentences before I stop. Is that bad? Should I be having a set goal every time I write?
     
  21. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    actually, proper ms format, in courier 12pt font, with 1" margins all around and double-spaced comes out to an average of 250 words per page...
     
  22. TableTop.Paper

    TableTop.Paper New Member

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    Oh my, I just checked and you're right. I thought it was 350 >_< sorry.
     
  23. Darker Rarechild

    Darker Rarechild New Member

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    This to me says that you are taking to much time and effort into what you are writing as opposed to just writing. I can bang out 3000 words in about 3 hrs, and I tend to write from about midnight till 3 am or so. That to me is pretty slow, in my opinion, but is a good pace for me, compared to what I am used to writing, which was virtually nothing when I was taking my time.

    and yes, what I am currently writing is absolute rubbish, but once I get it done, I can start my favorite part in the writing process, which is letting the story sit for a bit and then doing the correcting and expanding apoun and making the story better and having everything fit nicely.

    Because writing, is a lot like working with wood. You take a piece of wood, draw or tape a design on it, then cut the shape out as best as you can. After that, you take sandpaper to the rough edges and sand, and sand and sand until the edges are as smooth as silk and ready to be stained and finished and shown around.

    Because it doesn't matter what the wood looked liked after you finished cutting it out, because people won't see that part. What matters is the final, overall finished piece.

    a great snack for writing, by the way, is Dry Raman Noodles. Crush the noodles in the pack, add flavor mixture, shake up and enjoy. They RULE! :D
     
  24. g1ng3rsnap9ed

    g1ng3rsnap9ed New Member

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    I have been using the "Quality Over Quantity Method" lately, but the most that I've ever written in one night was eighteen pages. :eek:
     
  25. RomanticRose

    RomanticRose Active Member

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    This will work out very well until you have a deadline. When that time expires, all the editor or publisher wants is the finished work.

    I can write in a day as much as I need to if I want to keep up my nasty addictions like living in an apartment, eating, having a car, etc. I've produced thirty or more pages in a day, spaced over four to seven projects.
     

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