What's the most you can write in a day?

My standard rate is 2,000 words per day. That's what I assign myself.

The most I've ever written in one day is 26,700 words to finish a NaNoWriMo on the last day. It was painful and I nearly cried when I was done.

I never even considered this could be some competition when I put down my word counts. Mere curiosity on the part of the OP? I don't know.

The amount of words someone writes in a day has to do with so many factors there is no way one person should compete with another in this regard. Also, it's a competition that awards nothing.

All any writer should do is compete with themselves to write words every day and try to make them increasingly better.

 

Well mammamaia, maybe some people just like to see where their words per day falls among fellow writers. I don't think anyone here is trying to win or lose, we're simply answering a question. Curiosity in that regard is harmless and maybe it will help someone to increase their words per day instead of focusing on a perfectly clean first draft. It may also do the opposite for those who write a large volume per day and may force them to work more on quality over quantity.

Point is, it was a simple question that doesn't need your negative attitude complete with no contribution to the conversation. If we as writers want to discuss volume output per day, there is no problem with that.

~~SP

 

I really like that Facebook post - it's such a lovingly crafted image of their relationship, suggesting much more beyond the specific words stated, yet succinct. It's poignant and yet leaves the reader with a smile on their face...

 

3k is my normal goal everyday. Sometimes, like yesterday, I only make 2k while others I can do 4-5k. Just depends on how I feel and what I'm writing.

 

Hi,

Respectfully I disagree. It is a competition and I'm sure I must be close to the victory line!!!

Cheers, Greg.

 

Lots and LOTS of coffee....

 

I write 1200 words an hour. I get bored after two hours. But I'm slow and take my time.

 

No typo. Just idiocy.

I can comfortably keep a pace of 3k/hour when writing a first draft. I can hit 4k/hour if I'm trying to go fast but that's when the quality suffers.

 

The work will be crap if the writer writes crap. If he/she wrote 100 words that day? They'd be crap. 10,000? Still crap.

If I sit for hours and hours, barely getting anything down and realize I have been at this for 16 hours, I will look over what I have and frequently *keep* it but also not get too attached to it. Tomorrow it may all go bye-bye. Slow days are crap days.

If the writer is not inspired or enthusiastic about their work it will take longer to get it right. That's fine. Not every day will be like it wasn't work. Some days it's a slog (as I'm sure you know ). You grind and grind and your word count will be dismal. But with a decent writer, the reader will never know the difference between that day's writing and the day when you wrote 10-12k words. Equally golden (or gag-worthy).

When I was a kid, Stephen King said he wrote for 8 hours a day. That figure blew me away. I could hardly believe anyone could do that.

Now? That'd be a good way to publish one or two 500-page books every year, right?

But if you do 100 words a day? That's 1750 days to finish that unedited manuscript!!! Almost five years to write a first draft that will be junk anyway because it is a first draft.

My advice is get it all on paper and then edit the snot out of it. Don't worry about leaving scenes out or not fully fleshing out that character. When you edit, all that will happen.

If writing 100 words per day is what a writer likes, then that is great! If sitting for more than fifteen minutes is uncomfortable, just "do what you can and you'll get there eventually".

 

The max i can do, if i can actually put my mind to it is maximum of 2-3k words, and thats normally in a 4-5hr spat split up into a couple of 2 or so hour stints

 

I write around 1000 words every week and its perfectly fine. Book has 20 000 words or so, that means 5 months of slowly paced, nice hobby work I don't think that anybody in this world can have a smooth story idea every day

 

The most I write per day might be about 1500, but that's only when I get on a roll.

Most of the time, I can manage only about 500 before I get fatigued and decide to stop to avoid having to edit out a whole bunch of crap.

 

It really depends on how I'm feeling and what I'm writing. Sometimes, I'm just not feeling the writing, and I'm perhaps writing a chapter that isn't particularly exciting for me yet is still necessary for the story. In these instances, I'll perhaps only churn out a few hundred words a day. Same goes for if I feel what I'm writing is bad. I know I'm going to have to go back and edit it all anyway, but when I know something isn't great, it slows me down.

On the other hand, if all of those things are opposites, I can write quite a bit. Just yesterday I sat down and in a single, 90 minute ish sitting, wrote 3,500 words. The reason being is because it was a very exciting chapter with lots of cool description and tension building and I believed it to be of (relatively) high quality.

 

I usually write anywhere from one sentence to three pages. My most in a day is about 6000 words.