I started to think about this while I'm revising a chapter in my novel. I think I wrote about 12-15k in a single session for some old fan-fiction project I did about 8 years ago. Damn near killed me too but I was so engrossed with the subject/story that I couldn't stop. Oddly enough, I can never seem to match that pace since. The most I've ever written in the last few months is around 3-4k.
1k lol...I suck.... but neverless I'm proud of it. On bad days 500 words wear me out so I have to stop before i start feeling out of it.
I have when I have had 0 kids to worry about someone bringing me food produced 25-30,000 words in a day. That is around 5-6 hours work. With kids I do between 3-7K most days (represents about two hours writing) - however today with a headcold managed about 600 words lol It varies if I am editing I may only write 10 words. I write about 50-75K words over a period of about 20 days usually. The stage of the story also varies - for example a rewrite is much quicker than a first draft. A second rewrite if required is much slower. Basically midway through the rewrite it is as fast as my little fingers can type - when I am in the story and the ideas are flowing I write about 850 words every twenty minutes. It is as much down to my typing speed as anything. I learned to type reasonably quickly at work and uni. Have contemplated doing a legal secretary course just to improve it. Sometimes I can manage over 1000 words in twenty minutes (which is when I get around 7K), at present I manage about 40 wpm. I find it useful to know how many words I produce because it allows me to organise what I am going to do when.
I have school, and homework and dinner to cook, so on weekdays I only write about 2K a day. And that's when I have an idea about what I want to write.
Well, I wrote a 2500 word essay for philosophy last year, in about 3 hours... Does that count? But fiction wise, I can never get too much out in one go... I don't have an exact word count as I only work on my novel in my notebooks, and my short stories don't get over 1500 words most of the time, but... You know how if you take an aerial view of an upright notebook you can see the pages clumped into a few sections? I was doing one section a day for about a week over Summer. If I'd kept that up, I'd be finished my draft by now, but oh well. I'd guess I do about 500 words a day now, maybe 1000 if I'm good.
i never counted... but when on a major project, i was known to work non-stop for 18-20 hours a day for weeks at a time... if one of my kids didn't bring me food now and then, i guess i'd have been down to a skeleton, by the time i stopped... otherwise, 'normal' for me would probably be around 10-15 pages [2,500-3,750 words] per day...
I never really kept track of the best day. I estimate my average day of writing nets about 500. Thus, some days a few thousand, some days a few hundred, some days I don't have the chance to add words to a project. It's not the quantity typed, in the end. It's the quality of the words that remain, that enables them to be published.
I remember I wrote a 60000 page novel in less than a week years ago. Unfortunately it was a quick project I quickly dropped.
He he, I finished NaNoWriMo in a week - most of it written in two days. So I know I can clear 10,000 - 20,000 words at a push. I wrote 7,000 habitually over the summer, but I also went crazy for reals, so don't do that.
I've done NaNoWriMo in a week, as well, so presumably at least 10k/day. I only spend two hours a day writing if I am not partaking in some event (NaNo or otherwise), and I generally average about a thousand words a day. At least now, when I am working on later drafts and reflecting more heavily on each sentence. An early draft, though, I am likely writing at about 3k to 5k/day, since I am just writing to get it all out there and worrying about sentence structure once I have something to really work with.
i did a 47 page project in one night. about 9k words, 20k words including code (software assessment) and 20 odd graphs and flow charts.
I think 16k was the most. I couldn't sleep so I turned on the laptop around midnight and wrote until my Dad woke for work. At that point I stopped, ate breakfast, and then went to sleep. Last time I wrote a lot in one day was July 31st: I needed to write 15k to win JulNoWriMo. It was possibly the busiest day I had in terms of commitments in the entire month but I managed it at 11:57pm.
I wrote a few things yesterday 1 untitled - 5311 2-C.I.T.W-1530 3-W.I.T.D- 951 Like hope I can keep going.
About 6000 words. 5000 is usually the maximum I can write in a day before my work starts to get lousy, so I make myself quit at that point.
I once wrote 15k for a fanfic contest, finished it two days later, and never typed it up...Tired me out, though.
a word of motherly/editor-ly general advice: don't try to match/beat anyone else's numerical best... just aim for quality, not quantity...
My most was about 1,500 words in a day. If I push myself beyond that, I don't enjoy writing, because my sentences get lousy. I like making my sentences beautiful. Asking how fast you can write is a little like asking a pianist how fast they can play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Okay, maybe it isn't like that at all, but playing the sonata fast does not mean playing it well. And writing fast usually means writing badly.
My highest word count in one day was about 6,000 for NaNo...normally I'll do anywhere between 800 and 1,500 in a sitting.
Writing fast does not have to mean writing very badly. Nor does it on any level mean the final story will be bad. I know one woman that writes faster than I do usually and practising writing at those speeds she can produce breathtaking pieces her work is exceptional. I know the same amount of my work produced in the same timeframe now is better than it was a year ago. The final product will be much better as well. I hope my work continues to improve at those rates. I know other writers that write 50-100 words in that same timeframe. They still get their books completed and published just not at the same rate. Everyone should find their own pace ultimately it is the finished product and its quality that counts. If you are constantly getting closer to the goal of completing good quality work or having fun when writing then the speed is unimportant. Knowing your writing pace can be useful later when it comes to setting deadlines. However one thing NaNo in its various guises throughout the year shows people can write at speed and produce a novel they are pleased with. Several of the published writers I know write a sloppy draft before they write a good one and just barrel through it - quantity over quality in a first draft is not necessarily bad advice. Being too attached to your words because you have lovingly crafted each one can have a negative affect on the final product. A lot of people that have never succeeded in completing a novel's first draft do, the aftercare is really good. Often they go on to change their way or working - some do it slower because that works for them others realising writing quickly through first draft suits them.
I agree with Elgaisma when she says, "Writing fast does not have to mean writing very badly". I find writing more slowly often leads to inconsistency in style and over-thinking the scene. Plus, if something takes too long to write (eg: if writing the first draft of a single chapter spans more than two or three days) then I'm likely to lose patience with it and end up disliking it.
Not just that no way would I delete 30,000 words if it had taken me a year to write it. When I can make it back in a week it is a no brainer that if it makes the story better then I take it back. It is much easier to cut a piece of work that hasn't taken long to write than one you have spent ages over. My favourite example in my first book is my falcon. Intially the king had turned into a normal brown peregrine falcon. Sometime during the writing of my second book my brain remembered the falcons the Kings of England had, bit of research later and I discovered the white gyr falcon. Wasn't quite right as I needed the quick dive of the peregrine falcon so I created the Great White Falcon. I could have gone back and just changed the references. However pulling the whole story back to where the falcon first appeared (around 30-40K words back) allowed me to turn it into a much better symbol and also change the landscape of the island and design of the buildings in the town it fitted better in its surroundings. The story was fine with a brown falcon - it is much better with my Great White Falcon. The visuals created by taking it back are stunning in comparison - the white falcon taking out a brown falcon later on worked really well. For me writing quickly does mean a good bit of editing, changing, deleting etc but in the long run makes for a story that is more consistent and flows better. I can still completely write, rewrite and edit a novel in just under three months to the best standard i am currently capable. It probably isn't wonderful I have only been writing fourteen months but nor is it crap either. How someone writes is entirely down to what works best for them but it annoys me when it is assumed writing fast has to mean your final work will be poor quality or when people spout 'quality over quantity' when it is in relation to an early draft - for some people it is good advice but for a lot of writers I have met over the past few years most published traditionally in print and bringing in pennies from it - they write a sloppy/zero/dirty draft first and would actually say for them 'quantity over quality' for the first draft just get that story out.
29k, about two weeks ago. Me and my friend had a writing duel. "Whoever writes the most words by the end of the day wins!" I won by 8 words or so, it was a fun day. The best part is that we began the duel seriously, actually trying to write our book's plots, but by the time we hit 10k we went down the "THEN ALIENS CAME" route of "screw plot I want to win" cheating. It was hilarious. We had to delete pretty much everything after we hit the 10k milestone, but it was a great time. It was the best time I ever had when writing something to be honest.
