What was your most productive day writing? For me it was about 5k words after many hours at the KB. I have heard about atleast one author who has done as much as 30k words in a day, which is an incredible pace.
I think the most I ever cleared was around 9k and that was largely thanks to voice typing and a whole lot of focus that I just can't seem to summon anymore. These days, I'll take what I can get though!
The muse can be fickle, when it comes to matching your schedule, but what can you do? Just do your best, and hope the muse makes an appearance when it comes time to edit.
It's hard to say, because when I'm really focused on writing and deep in the fray I'm not paying attention to word count. The days when I was writing up a storm were on Passing Strange, when my entire day was structured around the writing, in various aspects. In bed, at night and in the morning, I'd be dreaming the story, sometimes even when asleep (though I don't think I ever got anything I could use directly that way), then before breakfast I'd check in on the message board and see what comments had been left (I was writing it on a message board). I'd respond, then once that was cleared from the to-do list I'd settle in and think about what needed to happen in the day's segment. I'd attempt to cook breakfast at the same time, and usually the thinking would win out. And whenever a good idea presented itself I found myself pacing around the house, having entirely forgotten I was supposed to be cooking. Sometimes the sausages were sizzling and I'd completely forget about them. Going back and forth between attempting to cook and pacing/thinking, I'd eventually scrape together something like food and stuff it into my face, still thinking. Then I'd put fingers on keys and start trying to make them type, but it wouldn't happen until the ideas were right. But they'd come together (could take fifteen minutes or so) and suddenly I'd be tapping keys. I might find I was going the wrong direction and need to delete and start again, maybe a few times, until I started hitting the flow. That's when you've laid the proper ground work with the thinking and the ideas are lined up properly (which doesn't mean they're complete, but that they're all aligned and ready to link up). Then I'd become a typing machine, going so fast at times my fingers stumble over each other. Lunch time would fly by, still typing like a madman. Suddenly I'd hit a lull and realize I'm hungry and had been for a long time, and it's getting dark outside. Not usually, this is on the best days. Time ceases to exist in any form we recognize as such when you're deep in the flow. It's a waking dream state that's focused in ways nighttime dreams aren't. Sometimes I'd complete a chapter in a day, sometimes two, depending on how long they were. But I wasn't using a word counter at the time. Not until I realized what had started as a short story had become a novel, and I looked up the word count for novels and downloaded an app to track it. That was when I was nearly through the story, and at that point those mega-writing days were behind me. As I neared the end things got a lot more difficult, and many days I had to plod along and force myself to write—it no longer drew me in with that intense fascination and power I had when the story was something shiny and fresh and I could dive into it and plunge deep. What was left to complete was more like a puddle filled with brackish stale water, and I really didn't want to stick my face in there again, but I wanted to finish the thing, so I did it. At that point I was probably lucky to be forcing out a few thousand words a day, and then revising them heavily. Oh, and revising was a big stage I'd do in the afternoon and into the evening. You had I think an hour to edit posts on that board, and I'd use it to the fullest extent. Then dinner, at some point walk the dog (that was prime thinking time, but frustrating too), and then, after all the typing parts were done, start dreaming up tomorrow's segment. Damn, those were heady days. I can't do it like that for Season of the Witch, because I'm not quite the writer I need to be to do it that way yet. I'm writing it at a higher level. But I'm developing myself. That's what the blog is all about, the U of Me. The necessary systems in my brain are growing and fitting themselves into place, and I'm learning how to develop the ideas, the situations, and the characters to their fullest potential. I just need to develop the writer a bit more first.
I honestly can't recall. I know that last Thursday I created an entirely new 3,500-word chapter in 6 hours, though -- 6pm to midnight. (I was also WFH, so I had to take an hour for dinner, and the chapter was due by Friday morning). I try not to rush such things, but take my time over them. But I also depend on my critique partner for his analysis. If I submit something on Friday morning and it's done by Friday night, I can clear the objections on Saturday afternoon, and spend Sunday on doing a rough draft and Monday evening on polishing it. (Mind you, that is a best-case scenario. What often happens is spending Wednesday night on clearing the objections, and then Thursday night on creating the next submission). It is what it is.
Yeah, same I can't recall either. Although I recall that in my early days, I used to have moments where thousands of words would flow very quickly. I remember writing a particular chapter of Beneath the Moonlight. My fingers would hit the keyboard like bullets from a machine gun and words rained down the page. That never happens these days because I take great care of every word and every sentence. For the record, when I re-read that chapter after a while, it was complete garbage. It makes sense though. If you don't put care into something, it won't turn out well.
Absolutely, agreed. I remember doing the same when I started writing. I wrote anything and everything: fan-fiction, poetry, haiku, etc. etc... and didn't care much what genre I tried, as long as I was having fun and making people laugh. Frankly, looking back at some of those early efforts makes me wince -- it's a bit embarrassing. (To be clear, I never consciously wrote trash; I always, always, always checked for basics like grammar and spelling, and always checked for logic errors and continuity errors, and thought deeply about characterisation, internals, and dialogue. But on the other hand ... some chapters achieved nothing except being a laugh factory, and one scene did nothing but introduce a talking cat. *facepalm* What was I thinking?!) On the other hand, some of the other ideas, scenes, poetry, and haiku were genuinely good. I wrote one scene in those days about Lost Cities and how they come about, which was fun. I wrote parodies of the Smurfs, of Monty Python, of The Simpsons, etc... and I wrote some scenes with pathos, about a man lost in the wilderness, falling ill with a fever, close to death, finally falling into a deep sleep and into dream about coming home from his travails, his parents welcoming him home, his mother crying and fussing, his father stern and unyielding. As scenes go, that one wasn't too bad. I tried my hand at writing historical comedy, a la Blackadder, but the more I learned about history, the more I realised how difficult writing a Blackadder would be. So I gave up on that and wrote a different episodic history, set in the late Anglo-Saxon era, instead. *shrug* As my first foray into historical fiction, it wasn't exactly bad. But -- ahem -- I have now progressed far, far beyond that. Why was your chapter rubbish, ps102? Do share.
Sometimes when I'm typing super fast it comes out really good, but there are loads of typos. Sometimes they're so bad I need to fix them right away, while I still remember the words i was trying to write. But I worked out the ideas quite well before I started typing. More than that really—I had an overall plan (very loose and rough) for the whole story, and each day I'd work out the part for thast day until I understood it well enough to start writing. And every so often I had to take some time to think long and deep about the whole next section, like a few chapters, or about how it was going to end. You need to have at least a decent idea about that a little ways in or you don't know where you're headed.
All four novel I've written have been completed with a 5 - 8K session on the final day. Once I see the summit poke through the clouds it's full steam ahead. I'm general, though, I don't tend to conflate word count with "good" on the day to day level. I measure everything in weeks. Real life and work, too.
I had a day (that lasted well into night) when I cleared over 5.5K. I'm not the fastest writer. I do a lot of editing and rewording as I type. It saves on later editing but lowers daily word count. I also jump around between writing, researching and goofing off on the internet, which sucks up even more time. Anything over 2K is pretty fantastic for me, really, and many days, I'm lucky to clear 500. Still, progress is progress, right?
When I am absolutely in the zone, working on something very much plot-focused, I can manage 1000 words an hour. But my limit is around the 5500 word mark for what I can produce in a day. I hate the process of writing, and I feel completely burned out after about 5 hours at the keyboard. It feels like I have completed a full shift at work, and it's on a day off, which makes things worse ! I remember reading that Michael Crichton wrote 10000 words a day. Damn, dude. wish I could manage that.
Makes me wonder if he was dictating to a professional typist, the way Heinlein would do. Wait, did he actually do that, or am I thinking of his character Jubal Harshaw from Stranger in a Strange Land? I know there's some famous author who did it, I just don't remember who.
I wish we could fix that for you. I'll admit that sometimes it's torture for me, too, but if it didn't give me joy, I wouldn't do it. I love writing.
Looks like Mark Twain did it for his autobiography: 'The Autobiography Of Mark Twain': Satire To Spare "Twain first tried dictating into Thomas Edison's new recording machine but didn't like it -- he was a man who strutted stages all over the world, delivering extemporaneous spiels. Twain needed a live audience to speak to, not a bloodless machine. He eventually found that audience in stenographer Josephine Hobby and author Albert Bigelow Paine, his first biographer."
