Ever go to Google Earth Pro? I've had it on my various machines over the years. Having a high resolution digital globe is great for researching landscapes. I started using it for work back in 06. I use it now for digital tourism.
For self publishers there can be a need to be relatively prolific, as regular releases do stimulate the amazon algorithm.. it not a worry for trad authors because their uploads are via their publishing house and the publisher will have regular releases from a variety of authors to keep the code goblins happy.
Except you will have deadlines from your publisher and you have to meet them or face repercussions. Typically in traditional publishing, you will have to produce one finished book per year. If you are successful, your publishers will often push for multiple books every year, often in different series. The idea of "screw word counts" is just dumb. It's the measure of your progress toward a given goal. It's only valid if you don't actually want to succeed.
I thought you were a self published author Cephus. I must have missed the news that you’d got a traditional deal. Who’s it with ?
Between articles, stories, press releases, letters, memoir (for grandchildren only), and several other endeavors, I'd estimate I turn out several tens of thousands of words a week. It's much easier for me to write than talk, and I do a reasonably decent job of talking. Never occurred to me to actually keep track of the number, but perhaps only words written for publication are worth counting?
I know some authors who write by dictation and can easily turn out 25k words in day. When I tried that I found I spent about three times as long as usual editing which I believe goes to the point selbbin was making . Yes you have to be productive but word count alone is not the beall. If you write 100k words in 5 days but then spend three months editing out all the errors and problems, that isn’t better than taking four times as long to write a decent manuscript that needs significantly less cleaning up to be publishable which is to say word count is not the only measure of progress
In some cases the same reason people who only cook for themselves and the occasional friend still spend time on cookery forums, or go to after work cookery classes. You do have good advice in this thread for those who do want to take it to another level though.
In my opinion, the big take away from @Cephus approach is not the wordcount, which would never be my touchstone. Using the sporting analogy referenced above, saying wordcount is the primary measure is like telling those Olympic swimmers they need to bulk up so they can survive tackling Manu Tuilagi. On other points, the focus, dedication, effort, sacrifice and, above all, removal of excuses makes absolute sense. Whether it's swimming or being crushed by a Samoan freak of nature, serious athletes put in serious shifts of time and energy. I have spent hours at laptop and, occasionally, ended up with fewer words than when I started. Still counts as a writing session, but just not done it often enough. The wordcount really isn't the issue. Making the time and stopping with feeble excuses does pose the challenge. I'll probably never write 5k word p.d. for more than one day in a row, more a night owl that early bird, but can certainly find more time that I currently allow. Who knows? After 40 years...best not think about that. I write quite a bit at work and know I do it very well. Counts for naught, to my mind, as far as writing for publication goes.
There is a lot more to writing than word count. While reading some authors I'll say to myself: "Oh, it's the same book again." or "Instead of a dozen books he could have told this story in half a dozen." There's sometimes also a notion (not necessarily here, but I see it everywhere in life) that quantity and quality exist in a strictly inverse relationship, and that's not true. What's absolutely true is work ethic matters a lot more than people give it credit.
Had a deal on the table with Tor years back. Turned it down. Didn't want to deal with the crap that I'd have to deal with and my agent agreed with me.
I never said that you have to write 5k a day. Nobody can quote where I did. I do, but it wasn't that long ago that I was only doing 2k. The more you work, the harder you work, you will naturally get faster. What we're seeing is people who can't hit the 5k a day (which was never even suggested as a requirement) and are balking at the number instead of the concept. If you want to be successful, you do have to be concerned with your output. Traditional publishers have deadlines. Self-publishing, you have to keep producing or people will forget about you. The specific number of words that you produce doesn't matter. The fact that you keep writing consistently does.
I wasn't suggesting you were setting specific wordcount as target for others. It's your metric, I admire it, but can't imagine it will ever be mine. What is unarguable is the efficacy of the work ethic you outline and, clearly, applying an individualised version of that will benefit anyone aspiring to write for publication. Just to be clear, traditional publishers aren't sending me notifications of upcoming deadlines and self-pub is not for me. I write short stories and doggerel, enjoy it when I produce something I like, but have only whimsical notions of quitting the day job when that first cheque for 5 euros might arrive, if ever. Still ambitious to get better at short stories and doggerel, so will apply some of the modus you've outlined. And yes, writing consistently is a common failure and at least that is rectifiable.
At the end of the day success is defined in lots of different ways and people write for lots of different reasons - there's not one right way of achieving even commercial success... the high volume production model is one route to success but its not the only one.
I didn't bring the whole thing up. I said I write 5k a day. Everyone else acted like I was suggesting the moon was made of green cheese.
Perhaps the minds of professional writers have their own writing secrets and techniques that keep them from professionally burning out. I'm just a university student and I'm tired of preparing for exams, writing various essays, sometimes I don't want to do anything, let alone write. I often read the writings of professional writers. you can check here it helps me to find ideas for my studies to complete the course. And sometimes it seems fantastic to me that professional writers can publish a book a year, and some manage to release several. If I can’t write a couple of essays, then how they manage to avoid professional burnout is a mystery to me.
Professional writers treat it like a job because it is. It doesn't matter if you want to get up and go to work, you still do it because that's how you get paid. It's the mark of a serious writer that they move from the "I'll do it if I want to" to "this is what I do, no matter what I want" mindset.
Generally not unless it violates specific moderator instruction, and usually after multiple warnings have been issued. Almost never happens unless it's a last straw kind of thing.
