I’ve decreased my minimal writing word count from 500 to 300 words per weekday. I can’t seem to manage more at the moment, what with work and this wonderful amazing weather that beckons to go outside and “frolic”. I don’t feel good fighting myself up to 500 words when I’m always thinking about what I could be doing outside right now. Forcing myself like that is no fun, and I’m on no deadline but my own. So I decided that, for now, 300 words a day is enough. My 1500-word weekend-target will stay the same. Basically, I’m out 1000 words per week - but at the moment, it’s worth it.
Hi, Pia. I recently finished my first novel and after reading Stephen King's: On Writing, I tried to push out 2,000 words a day like he does. The problem is, SK doesn't work a full time job so he has time to write. I will say that setting your 300 wpd limit, depending on your goal, is awesome... as long as you stick to it. 2,000 wpd (700,000+ words per year) was unachievable for me right now. I would write from 5pm until 2am and still wrote no more than 1500 words. I'm in the process of revising and trying to find an agent and that is taking far too much time from my writing. When I start my next novel, my goal is 1,200 wpd. Keep at it!
ReplyDeleteHey William, congrats on finishing your first novel! That’s always a great feat. I hope you celebrated. I opened a bottle of bubbly with my flatmates when I finished mine. Very relaxing.
ReplyDeleteWow, from 5pm to 2am - what a schedule to keep to next to a full-time job! Kudos to your perseverance! 1.500 wpd aren’t peanuts. That’s approx. 10.000 wp-week - with a novel between 80.000 and 100.000 words, you’d have your first draft within three months.
If I really pushed myself, I could keep to that pace (I’ve done it during NaNoWriMo) - but the quality of my writing as well as my imagination would suffer after a while, mostly due to sleep deprivation. Amazingly, now that I’ve lowered my daily word goal to 300, I often make it to 500 without problems. It’s like the pressure’s off and then I can just finish this scene or that chapter. It’s more fun again, I guess… Maybe lowering your word count to 1.200 will work for you that way, too. Plus, it’ll give you more time for revising and querying, which, as you said, always takes up so much more time than expected.
So, you keep at it, too, and good luck with the agent search.