Thread: How many words a day?

I've currently set myself a target of 1000 words a day and so far have been able to keep it up.

As a relatively new writer, does that seem too much or too little to you more experienced scribblers?

Daily output varies wildly from author to author. 1,000 words per day seems very reasonable to me. I know some members here do much more than that, and some only do a few hundred per day (me, in a typical 1.5 hour writing session). On those days when I can devote 4 or 5 hours solid to a project, I can get up toward 2,000 words.

I think any goal you set for yourself is reasonable. For myself, I used to set goals but then I would get all uptight when my creative juices ran empty and I couldn't meet them. So now I wait for inspiration and when it hits I write like crazy until it is gone, it's like seeing how far you can go on a single tank of gas. I wrote the first 70,000 words in a little over a month or so...the next 35,000 took over a year. LOL. Of all the advice I have read on writing the best was "just keep writing, good or bad just keep writing". Good luck!!

i used to write 2500 a week and thought that was far too little. last night i pushed out a whopping 13 words and
the sad thing is...that was a good turnout for these past couple months. damn this internet.

I write most of the morning if I don't have a meeting to go to. I don't go to afternoon or evening meetings any more. I fall asleep.

Notepad has no word count feature so I have no way of keeping track even if I want to, which I don't most of the time. When all that needs to be written for that day has been written I stop.

When I write a story for the LM competition I keep a rough estimate in my head and when I think I've about hit the limit I dump into Word to get a count.

In my more active years I was constantly aware of word counts, column lengths, all the technicalities of newspaper and magazine article writing. That was then. Blesséd are the retired, for we can forget such mechanical matters.

1000 a day is definitely reasonable and respectable. Fifty days of that and you're officially in 'novel' land, congrats.

I have strange days where in a few hours I can get around 2000 words done, then the next night I just reach 1000, 500 or even a measly 100. I wrote around 8400 words, by hand, over 5 days the other week and that was excellent for the way I've been writing recently; 1680 a day, approximately, that turned out to be -- very happy with myself.

Basically, if you set yourself a target, you need to have the discipline to get to that target every day. If you really want the motivation, have someone you know/trust who you've told a deadline and target number of words to, to make you perform some kind of forfeit if you don't reach the target. Handy motivators could be: "Hey, if I don't reach 50,000 words in two months' time, I'll give you my TV", or, "I need to have another 20,000 words by the end of the month, if I don't you get five free slaps from which I can't flinch."

Lol, I amuse myself.

Basically, keep whatever target you feel you need for the writing, man But most of all, remember to enjoy it!
Keep writing.
Cefor

Seems respectable. I never really think about the amount of words I write though. I just brainstorm a bit and then go as far as that takes me. Sometimes it takes my whole day. Sometimes I finish in no time at all. Sometimes I just never get around to it. It just depends on how much isn't too much for you.

I average 2,500 a day. On really bad days, that drops to between 750 to 1,000. On really good ones, upwards of 5,000.

Never been a fast writer, but I try to be consistent and never miss a day. On average I produce about 4,000 words a week.

My target daily word count is usually 1,000-1,500 per day. I see no problem with yours, as long as you can stick with it.

I can hit the thousand work mark quite easily, though I don't write absolutely every day. I've wrote as much as 2,500 words one some days, and as little as a few hundred on others.

I think 1,000 a day is quite reasonable.

1000 a day for me. Last year I tried to force myself to write 2000 but found that I ended up discouraged and skipping days out of frustration. Recently, I've been able to keep up that 1000 word pace without getting too stressed, and as someone wrote above it's not too long until the stories start to really lengthen nicely if you can maintain a good consistent pace of 1000. It's arbitrary though, in my case as I imagine for many others it's just having that goal in mind that keeps us motivated to continue producing day after day, which is the real trick I think.

Sometimes a high word count isn't relevant, if I'm working on flash fiction or a short story, for example. In that case word quality matters more than quantity.

So for that reason, I focus more on "time spent" writing daily, as opposed to "words written". I try for at least an hour each day of focused writing. By that I mean, no internet and no television.

You can't prevent life's interruptions, but you can prevent your own distractions!

I was putting out 3k words a day at one point. 2500 of which would be scrapped the next day.

I wrote 31 words this week. It's great to set yourself goals. For me, more time is spent editing than writing. I've been writing short stories lately, and I average a thousand words an hour. The next few are spent editing that.

I don't really think there's a point where it becomes too much. Write whatever you're comfortable with. Just try not to ever be comfortable with writing 31 words a week.