Graham Greene advised writing 300 words a day. It works out at 2,100 a week, and 109,200 a year. I have a target of 500 words a day. The most I ever wrote in week was 8,000, but my average is about 2,500-3,000. I think long and hard about every word I write..
I don't have a clue how many words I write in any time period. Quite simply - some months I can put in 12 solid hours on some days and push out 4,000 words while other days I can't write a thing - not even odd notes - I'm just way to busy. So I'm not in the least bothered.
This is also influenced by the fact that there is no garuantee at all whether 4,000 words that flow or 10 words that I wrestle from stone will be any use at all... But I enjoy writing them.
Do you think long and hard about every "a", "an", "the", "it" etc? It seems like a horribly hard way of writing.
David
I think it's got to vary hugely depending on what it is you're writing, how much time you can allocate to writing, where in the process you are, and whether you've got your internal editor switched on or off. I think 2,500-3000 a week when you're an edit-as-you-go writer is really productive.
When I was trying to write Mills & Boon romance I used to be able to produce a 5000 word chapter in a day! But I wasn't working then, and that was in between dropping my son off at school in the morning and picking him up in the afternoon. I had my editor on 'sleepy' rather than 'off' but mostly it didn't need much rewriting. That writing process felt so easy and tremendously enjoyable. It was just like transcribing a daydream. It was vivid and visceral and I loved every moment of it. I think what made it so easy to produce the word count was writing within a prescribed framework - I didn't have to think too much about the storyline and I'd worked out the characters in advance (within the limits expected). All I had to do was daydream the scene and write it up! Sadly, it never got to publication, though I got as far as having an editor and working with her for months on different manuscripts, but somehow I could never completely adhere to the formula, and so in the end I had to give it up.
I spent ages trying to write a thriller. I had the thing so neatly plotted, but I doubted my capacity to pull it off and felt I just didn't know enough about some technical issues. I kept telling myself to just leave bits blank with a note-to-self for what I needed to find out later, but somehow I found that paralysing and I'd be lucky to end up with 100 words in a day.
Now, I'm trying to write something that I suppose fits most easily with literary fiction, maybe women's fiction. I can churn out words, but I'm struggling to find the voice and so I keep throwing them away (or rather into the cuttings folder). I think once I've found the voice I'll be able to write fairly fluently until I get to the 'sagging middle' issue I suppose. But now I'm constrained by a demanding job and so I'm hoping for about 1500 a week.
I don't usually have a target, and like Jennifer above I edit as I go - most days I'd say I get about 100-300 words a day unless I'm totally stuck. Some days I manage a thousand, but that's pretty rare. I think the most I ever wrote in a day was 1500, but at that point I was very early in my novel and managing 500+ a day, on average. Now I'm a bit later on my wordcount's dropped quite drastically.