Blogger: Wendy Lawton
I just walked in the door from accompanying Julie Klassen, one of my authors, on a week-long book tour. One of the best things about spending time in bookstores is that, among all the readers there to get autographs, we meet other writers. We savor the opportunity to talk about writing.
At one stop we talked about different writing styles. Someone mentioned the writers who had just completed NaNoWriMo— National Novel Writing Month. That’s when an author writes an entire book in a month. That’s right– one month! For those authors who did it, I can picture you checking to see if you still have a marriage, cleaning out the pizza boxes piled in the garage and trying to make your legs work again. But, bravo!
That led to talking about how many words most of us write in a day. Julie does about 5000 words a day when she is first drafting. My friend Debbie Macomber has the same daily page goal– 20 pages per day, four days a week.
[Note: a manuscript page with one inch margins, double-spaced, equals 250 words. So when an author talks pages rather than words, it’s easy to do the math. When a writer talks pages, however, he is not referring to printed book pages– these vary widely depending on the print size, the trim size, etc. When a writer talks about how many pages his manuscript is or how many pages he’s done, he is always referring to manuscript pages. These days, with the word count served up by our word processing programs, we more often talk in number of words rather than page count.]I mentioned a full time writer friend who has a daily word count goal of 1200 words. We started to roll our eyes at the measly word count until my husband took out his calculator and pointed out that a writer who did only 1200 words a day for 365 days would end up with 438,000 words a year. We all gulped. That would be more than four first drafts a year!
Now of course, no one is going to write for seven days a week but say the writer writes five days a week, taking two weeks off for vacation and a week at Christmas. That’s still 294,000 words a year. And at 1200 words a day there’s plenty of time left to revise, work on galleys and do marketing, right?
As someone who always crammed for exams and worked like a maniac closer to deadlines– I used to say I could do 5000 words a day with gusts up to 7500– this method of slow and steady seems like a miracle. What would life feel like with no guilt from procrastination?
My confession? I’m writing this blog ninety minutes before it needs to go live. [POSTSCRIPT: And then I posted it in the wrong place so it never published– so sorry. Today is definitely not my day.]
So how about you? What’s your work style? Are you slow and steady? How about fast and steady? What are the pros and cons?
Photo Credit: © Littlemacproductions | Dreamstime.com – Finish Line Photo
Wow, 294,000 words/year sounds pretty impressive when you look at it the way you described. 🙂 1200 words a day is definitely doable.
I tend to do a fast draft (my rough draft written as fast as I can do it—usually in 2-3 months). But my revisions and edits take a lot longer. I’m definitely a turtle in this phase. I’ve discovered how I do best with my first drafts. I’m still discovering my best process as I work revisions and edits and polishing. 🙂
Pro’s to a fast first draft that I can see are that the story stays fresh in my mind. I’m a plotter, so I take a fair amount of time to get to know my characters and the big picture plot before I ever write a word on the first page. Cons: I sometimes miss nuances in the first draft that are important. So it takes time to reconfigure the story to add some of those in as I revise.
The biggest Con I’ve discovered to revising slowly is that the story can lose some of it’s freshness for me. I have to be diligent to work on it daily (which, I confess hasn’t happened this fall!) to keep it alive in my mind as I work on making it better. 🙂
I’m glad you’re back safely and that you had a wonderful time, Wendy!
Jeanne, thanks for mentioning that edits and revisions take a lot longer than the first writing.
❀ Nice to know I’m not alone and on the right track.
Slow and steady. I write anywhere from 500 to 2000 words a day during first draft, averaging around 1000. That usually takes all day and exhausts me.
I wrote 150,000 words from late January through early October this year, with time off for editing another book and still another book’s release and its attendant promotion thrown in there. Now I’m revising, tightening, editing, polishing for a January deadline. With all those interruptions the process of writing one of my novels takes a year. There’s a lot of research involved in what I do, which doubtless slows things down.
Stress kills my creativity. And there’s no stress worse in my estimation (when it comes to writing) than time pressure.
I’m in the slow and steady camp. I try to write every day but there are day’s when it just doesn’t happen for one reason or another.
I’m slow and steady with occasional bursts of creativity interspersed with occasional droughts. Even during my droughts, I try to write something, anything, so I don’t completely lose momentum.
The important thing for me is to not beat myself up if I don’t make a goal one day. That could send me into a spiral of, “Who am I kidding? I can’t write. Why am I even doing this? I might as well quit.” (I don’t believe there’s a writer on Earth who doesn’t think these things at least once in their lives.) As long as I focus on what I’ve accomplished and worry less about what still needs to be done, I make progress.
We are our worst critic.
The spiral you mentioned stops momentum cold, doesn’t it?
So thankful for the nudge my critique partners deliver.
My goal is 2,000 words/day, and I edit as I write — a hangover from my days as a journalist. But there’s always plenty that needs to be rehashed during later editing sessions.
I’m a mom who’s homeschooling three middle schoolers so I don’t have a ton of time to write. I’ve participated in NaNo before and was able to crank out a full-length novel. The catch? It was sloppy and loose and I couldn’t figure out how to salvage a lot of it. Now I wake up early in the morning and aim to write for two hours before my kids get up. I consider my word count baseline to be 500 words, but I can often get up to 800-1,000 in this time. The best thing about this type of slow writing is that I have to do less overall editing when I write at the pace of my thoughts. Plus, even though it doesn’t seem like a lot as far as daily word counts go, 500 words a day, five or six days a week, for an entire year end up being 156,000 words–many of them keepers.
I’m impressed. One day at a time. I bet you like those hours in the morning when you can pray and write. “write pray” Awesome!
Interesting; slower can equal better quality. I find that when I have time to think over what I’m going to write next, the actual typing goes faster than when I start cold. I think over what I’ll write next as I do dishes, exercise, drive, etc. Encouraging to know your process.
When I draft, I try for 1k words a day for two months … that’s 60,000 words and a respectable first draft.
I’m realizing now, though, after getting my book deal with HarperCollins, that the stress and anxiety is worse with a book deal: more pressure … and DEADLINES.
Still, I know that 1k words a day is how I have to chip away at the mountain. (I work a full-time job as a recruiter as well.) Maybe someday I’ll ONLY be writing and able to hit higher word counts, but for right now, 1k a day.
Wendy, thanks for helping us remember that there isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all way to write.
I completed NaNoWriMo and my daily average was 1,666 words (evil looking number). What I learned from NNWM is that I actually work well under time pressure compared to what I had expected (I crammed for exams too).
I also learned that having a good understanding of who most of the characters were beforehand really helped the flow of the writing (I wrote a prequel for an existing manuscript).
I suspect slow writing might require less technical editing, but could potentially have less passion. Fast writing inspires my muse because the editor is locked away in a closet, and I can’t hear his critical comments (I’m letting him out after my novel draft has rested).
Blessings ~ Wendy Mac ❀
Wendy, when I did NaNo a couple years ago, I discovered I write well under time pressures too. 🙂 So glad you did it!
Thank you, Jeanne. I learned a lot, and I got 50% off Scrivener. Now I gotta figure it out. 😉
Wendy, your comment about the critical editor being locked away reminds me of Cecil Murphey’s book Unleashing the Writer Within.
Thanks for the tip, Jenni. ❀ I downloaded a free sample section of the book off Amazon. Lately, writing craft books are like chocolate to me.
I don’t aim for word count; instead, I look toward completing a scene, usually with at least one rewrite, in a work session. This normally comes to 2-5000 words, exclusive of the rewriting process.
Working every day is essential. Otherwise I forget who the characters are. (One could make a joke here, given an event in my very recent past, about forgetting who the author is.)
Insomnia does help.
I haven’t been to the blog comments here for a while. Grandkids were visiting and well, lots of ands… Great to see you back, Andrew.
I’m slow at times with my first drafts. My goal with first draft writing is 2000 words a day, but it doesn’t always happen. My New Year’s goal is to find a good schedule for writing and for all the other things a writer needs to do while enjoying my grandkids and family.
Do you need a companion in your goal-making? 🙂
Thanks so much, Ann! I hope that you had a great time with the grandchildren.
Andrew, I’m with you. I like aiming for a scene (sometimes more) per day. My scenes vary from 1200-2200 words. So, whatever it takes to get the scene from my head to the page. 🙂
Hi Andrew! Good to see you back.
Thank you, Lori – it is great to feel up to being here again!
Andrew, I like yours and Jeanne’s idea of completing a scene. And I’m glad to see you’re back in action. Blessings to you your family. ❀
Thanks, Wendy!
So good to see you back, Andrew!
I am late to the blog today.
I try to write 1,000+ words a day.
Slow to start but steady with follow through.
I try to write my fast draft in 3 months (about 1,500 words a day, with gusts anywhere from 3,000-8,000–depending on babysitters). 🙂 My editing and revisions stage can vary, depending on other variables. I think it’s so important to keep my goals clear and manageable.
I participated, though never officially signed up, in NaNo this year. After 3 weeks of writing all day, Monday through Friday, I’d finished a 79,500 word manuscript. I’ve found that right now, the demands of homeschooling, studying writing craft, reading, critiquing, and of course life in general, make it difficult to write a manuscript over the course of months. With all the busyness, I can’t get the quiet to feed creativity. But having a clear schedule to relax, spend time with God, and just write allowed me to reconnect with my creativity.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to accomplish a novel in 15 days again. But right now, this year, it was the method that worked.
For me, editing can fit into the chaos of life, but I’m planning a month of a clear schedule to focus solely on editing that manuscript 🙂
Slow and steady, which is better than nothing. Yes, I’m called to write, but I’m also called to homeschool my brood. Some afternoons, Monday through Friday, when I have a completed outline, I can do 2,000 words. A better average is 1,500. I completely agree with Hannah — my slow and steady, as well as thorough outlining, makes for less editing in the end.
Looks like you had a great trip, Wendy! Enjoyed your photos on FB.
Addendum: The more I write, the faster I get. And as the children become more independent, the more time I can find. Eventually, I hope to get to 5,000 a day.
You go Meghan!
I have only completed one book, but I am definitely at the turtle end of the scale (about 1,000 words a day for my draft). My editing was likewise slow, but surprisingly enjoyable. Much more so than the draft.
Which causes me to wonder. Am I an anomaly or do others prefer editing to producing the draft?
I love to edit, Joe. I do like having written so I have something to edit, but editing is much the easier for me. However, I might add that’s when the editing changes are my idea. Editing is more difficult for me when an editor has suggested the change if it’s something besides simple editing like better choice of wording etc. Then I have to wrap my mind around the change in the story that’s suggested before I can incorporate it. That’s a little harder.
Thanks Ann. It’s comforting to know that others love to edit. I’m still unpublished, so I haven’t (yet) faced the challenge of incorporating an editor’s changes into my work, but I’ve been forewarned. Thanks!
I discovered that I LOVE the draft stage of writing. But, I know a number of people who much prefer the editing stage. So, Joe, you’re not alone. 🙂
Wendy, thank you for shedding light on this. At times when things seem rather tricky, I’m going to teach myself to remember this math. Math! Who’d have thought MATH could bring such comfort to a word person? 😉
“No-one is going to write for seven days a week”?
Ummm…yes, some of us do! I write every day for an hour. Usually 500 words. Not a major accomplishment, no, but I do have three kids and two jobs and over 90,000 words to my credit.
Slow and steady is definitely the way for me.
I’m definitely slow and steady. I’ve never paid attention to my average word count per day. I guess I should. It really depends on the project and where I am with it, and what is going on with life. I’ve learned to be patient with myself, knowing the project always manages to get done, even when I’ve spent some days crying, “I’m a fraud! I’ve written, like, three publishable words today. My agent is going to fire me.”
Slow and steady.
At times I find it difficult to lift my feet over the furrows of self-doubt and resistance.
I’ve mulled over this quote from Charles M. Schulz: “There is no greater burden than great potential.”
Fear of success or failure can stop one in their tracks. Let’s pray that we traverse the bumps in the road with agility, all the while offering a hand to those nearby who need encouragement.
Jenni, I loved what you said about the fear of success or failure stopping one in his/her tracks. It’s so true. I agree with the need to pray through that. 🙂 And reaching out to others. Wise words here! 🙂
Thanks, Jeanne. Blessed by you.
Jenni, even your comments are so beautifully written. I think your self-doubt is misplaced. Praying your work finds the best homes. ❀
The Lord really does speak through you, Wendy.
Slow for sure. With a 6 month old and a 3 year old, I write whenever I can find the time. Sometimes it’s even typing with just one hand because the other is holding the baby.
Slow and steady, and just keep swimming.
But this month? I’m lucky to finish THE VERY LAST EDIT I PROMISE before we get into the flurry of Christmas.
I learned early in that I could write 2000 words in less than two hours when I was focused and in the zone. That becomes my goal word count. Then when I have deadlines, I take a realistic look at the calendar and allow for holidays, life events, editing, etc., and calculate how many days I have to write during the remaining time to still have a word count of 2000 words a day. That’s how many days I have to write. Then if I’m short, I know I have to write more the next day. If I’m over, then I’ve got some flexibility. I can write more — but that 2000 words a day is about a chapter for me and fits well with the rest of life.
Everybody has their way of doing things. Like Julie, who has been a wonderful accountability partner to me and a couple of my other friends, I tend to pound out about 5,000 to 6,000 words a day on a first draft. But I work at that intently for about a month, five days a week, or 20 days. Some days are a little slower. But the advantage of that on a first draft is more cohesion that only pecking away at 1,000 words a day or so. I lose my focus. I like to set my rough draft aside for one month, minimum, before I begin the edits. Then I slow down to roughly 3K a day so we’re looking at about six weeks for that first set of edits. That works really well for me. If you aren’t working on at least one chapter a day, I think it’s hard to retain focus. I wrote the 1K a day for several years and I didn’t get anywhere with my manuscripts until I ramped it up. Good post!
Carrie, thanks for sharing this. I’ve noticed I get more of a momentum on the days I write more. It reminds me of the runner’s high I used to get when I ran long distance. ❀
I wrote for fun in jr. High and High School. Then I wrote for classes in college. But when I started writing with the goal of publication, I finally got a writing schedule. I started out at 5 days a week for an hour or so. Then I went to 6 days a week for 2 hours or so, but now my kiddos are all in school and so I write 7 days a week. On days that I volunteer or have stuff to do during the day, I write at 4:00am, on the other days I write during the day in the newfound quiet of our house. I used to be slow and steady, for like, a decade. It took me 5 years to complete my first ms. Then two years to finish my second ms. Then I took the first ms. and took another year or two turning it into two separate mss. Then on a dare I discovered that yes, I could do fast writing and this year 2014 I wrote 3 new ms. Two novella mss. and a middle grade for NaNoWriMo. I was able to actually sell one of them, my very first book sale, and discover something amazing about myself. I can write fast, I just had to work up to it over a decade or so. So what is my style…I’m trying to figure that out.
Definitely more of a “slow and steady” kind of girl, although my kids are still young enough that I can’t maintain a high word count. I’m probably writing at least 1000 words a day, if you count all my blog posts, book reviews, etc. Once the kids get a little older I’m sure that number will change and skew more towards how much fiction I’m writing (oh, to dream!)
I probably won’t be able to do 7 days a week until they’re in college. Oh, I relish the thought! (Only 10 years to go!)
When ytou talk about “pages,” I am reminded of when I first started writing with a partner and he kept asking “How many pages do we have to write for it to be a book?” Everytime I gave him the same answer – “How big is the page? If it’s big enough to fit 60, 70,000 words, then just one will do.”
I work 55 hours a week. I’m a nurse. Not too much time left for family and writing. I finished an 87,000+ word book in a little over a year and am currently working on the sequel…again, though, when I have the time to squeeze it in. Would be nice to get published and make that my full time job…!
Ahem! What if you are, say, a stay-at-home Mom with only one hour of writing time per day (before the kids wake up, just f’rinstance,) and you do 700 words on a good day? Is there any room for slowpokes like me?