Not too shabby

Over a thousand words in one day. For me that's not too shabby.

Sometime after I picked up writing my story again, I got obsessed with word count. I searched around the internets to see if other people who write (notice I didn't say 'writers', for one, because I am not a writer, and for two, because people who talk about writing are not necessarily writers*) have similar obsession. As it turns out, quite a few people are talking about how much they write in a day in terms of word count.

I have heard everything from the more (seemingly) normal 500/day to the outrageous 10k/day. One lady (who is published, btw) said she writes between 10k to 15k in a day. That is pure insanity. Even if you are a published writer who writes that much, you could churn out fifty books a year at the rate.

I've also heard of authors who write only a handful of words in a day. What they do with the rest of the day I don't know, but I imagine that it takes the majority of the day just to pen that handful of words. I also imagine them laboring over a single sentence, writing and rewriting and finally deleting it all together.

As for me, I do set goals for word counts, but those goals constantly change based on what kind of writing I'm doing. If I'm making something brand new, I generally shoot for a low 200/day mark. (I have a full time job after all). But I also set goals for the week too, what I want to have written in terms of story, or how many chapters I want to have edited, or what 'act' I should edit that week. But my favorite goals always involve word counts. I am beefing up the entire word count of my current story (doing some much needed fleshing out of the characters) with a goal of adding 10k words in the final act alone. I am well on my way to meeting that goal.

I like keeping a log of word counts too. When I started my first entire edit, I went from 46k to 54k in three weeks, which for me, again, is incredible. I surprise myself often when I write. I also keep a log of word counts for each chapter and I love seeing the increases on a smaller scale. Sometimes the increase is only twenty words and other places it's almost a thousand.

I could go on and on about my obsession with word count, but instead, I'll just leave this weeks goal here and come back at the end of Saturday to see if I met it.

64k total by the end of Saturday.


*I personally only know one writer (my friend Cherrie) and probably a hundred people who write. I consider a writer someone who is published. Not anyone can lay claim to that word. And that is why I'm not a writer.