Chapter 122: Daily Word Counts…or Not

My stock - and I now see too hasty – answer when people have asked me whether they should write a book is: can you write 1000 words a day, five days a week, until you are done?

I say too hasty because my pat reply was based on my own experience as well as something I think I may have read a long time ago about how many words (or in his case, pages) the late Tom Wolfe wrote every day. Wolfe was a hero to my generation of aspiring writers, so it made sense to do what he did. A word count. A quota. A day’s work.

But the other day, after exceeding my 1000-word count – and feeling dizzy from the prolonged intensity – I ran into two colleagues and made the mistake of kvetching at how drained I felt. Writers don’t generally talk about their daily output; it’s uncool – like bragging about a workout by noting how many miles, laps, reps you’ve done. 

But I was all but gasping for air and needed to explain how I’d overdone it. Big mistake.

A thousand words, said one. I’m happy with 500.

A thousand words, said another. I don’t count. Maybe none one day and 2500 the next.

Which is to say, that the next time someone asks me about writing books, I will reply with the always maddening: it depends. It depends on who you are, how you write, and what being in a good writing zone/headspace feels like for you. 

This new response comes after putting the question to a group of writers I know: novelists, magazine writers, nonfiction book authors. 

Their answers varied – widely. I think that is a very good thing for those embarked on writing lives, or well along and wondering, as we all do, whether they are doing it right.

Rather than compress the results, I thought it might be most helpful if I offered their replies. Some asked that they remain anonymous; writers are a worrying bunch and I understand not wanting to reveal too much about one’s process. 

And to all those whom I offered my heretofore standard reply, I am so very sorry. Please, feel free to ask again. 

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When I'm writing a story--1500 words a day. They don't have to be good, and they usually aren't. 

-Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker

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I've never had a daily word count. I might rough out a scene, and then work on it for a week, trying to get it right. So most of my time is spent rewriting rather than writing. I start with a lot of words, most of them bad ('bad' meaning sloppy, not well written), and then I whittle them down to something that is short and--hopefully--good. So, as the week goes by, my word count (if I kept track of it, which I don't) actually diminishes. Clarity is what I aim for.

But even more important than roughing out a scene is getting the idea for the scene. Once I get the idea, then I'm fairly confident that the writing will fall into place.

-Julie Otsuka, novelist

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I don't believe in quotas. In this case, size doesn't matter. Some nights I turn out 200 words. (I'm a night writer.) Other nights, 1,500. If the 200 are good, I go to sleep after 3 a.m. feeling great. No matter the count, I follow Hemingway's advice and always try to quit at a high point, a place where I'm eager to return. This often means I could write more but then I'd end up in a valley difficult to emerge from the next night. That's the danger of quotas.

-Dale Maharidge, author and professor

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My freshman year of high school we had an English teacher who loved word counts. In fact, almost all his assignments had the same one: fifty words. 

You might think 50 words is a joke, and for the flunkies in class it certainly was. But for those of us who loved writing, it proved a great challenge. Fifty words! Every day!! I learned more from that class than almost anything else in high school. 

Obviously, you won't get there if you only write 50 words a day for the rest of your life. But it is so much more difficult and rewarding to write 50 really tight, polished words than 500 loose and jumbled ones. Counting words is a bit like counting calories — at first you're racing toward your goal, but eventually you're worn out, stuck and miserable. 

For me, 200 words Monday, 1,500 words Tuesday, zero words Wednesday, it doesn't really matter. As long as I am conditioned enough to be able to write 1,500 words in a day when I need to, there's no reason to do it all the time.

-Sonja Sharp, Los Angeles Times

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In college, those wistful undergrad days of mine when I was stringing for two local papers, I always followed the Hemingway edict of 500 words: that was in addition to whatever I filed to my editors. These days, when I'm not reporting and on the road, I'll do 750. But those words are oftentimes in my personal journal, to keep the axles greased for when I do have the time to sit down for a few hours and work on something longer.

For young writers, don't sweat the word count. Sweat the seat time.

-Ken Rosen, author

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I don't have a daily word count but I do have project-based word counts, i.e. dividing a big project up into doable writing sessions. My one rule is to make the word count lower than what I will likely produce. The idea is to set the count at say 500 words per day but knowing that you'll likely write 800-1000. That way you walk away feeling like an overachiever as opposed to setting a 2000 word goal, writing 1200 and walking away feeling like a loser.

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If I'm working on a book and I know this is a marathon, not a sprint, then anything north of 500 words is a satisfactory day. If I get over 1000, it's very productive. And maybe three or four times in my book-writing life, I've written more than 3K in. a day. But my method also involves spending a week or more just outlining each chapter in miniscule detail. before I even begin to compose.

-Samuel G. Freedman, author and professor

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I cannot say I do... I guess I tend to think about those kinds of goals/targets more in terms of story sections, so the math becomes very section-dependent. (On some pieces for the paper, I probably spend half the time on the first 25% of the story.) So, getting the first 500 down and feeling at least decent about it might feel like a great haul for the day. But I'd be less smug about committing words 1500-2000 to paper.

And there are certainly times I'd place myself in the "2K one day, 20 the next" camp

-Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times

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No, never did. But writing for a daily newspaper makes the daily word count academic- some days you knock off little or nothing , on others 5,000 words, even more. There’s also the question of how the writer feels. If he/she is “in the zone” words flow like water over Niagara: if not, they have to be squeezed out, often by relying on uninspiring  technique. My motto was always to go with the flow.

-Jurek Martin, The Financial Times

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I try to stay away from word count goals because my output is so lumpy — nothing one day, a ton the next. I’ll spend a day or two “pre-writing” — teeing up material in just the right order — and then the next day I’ll write super-fast. Compartmentalizing those tasks is useful to me — I can come in fresh when it’s time to write and just focus on the sentences. 

I think for me, it’s probably healthier not to have a metric to measure as I write. I worry that if I had a word count goal, I’d start obsessing. (I’m an obsessive person, like so many writers, so for me this is a real danger.)

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When writing a book, the equivalent of five double-spaced pages -- 1250 words a day. That quota has been intact since my first book. For articles, it's a more flexible standard. The quota is based on the simple idea that the easiest thing in the world to do is not write. You can convince yourself you're doing real work when not writing, but that's bullshit. The hardest thing to do is write a first draft, and the quota makes that painful duty a daily obligation.

-Jeffrey Toobin, author 

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When I was in college and thinking about writing as a career, I read a very influential series of books: The Paris Interviews. Every major 20^th Century novelist was interviewed extensively and questioned, in granular detail, about their approach to writing. What struck me was how disciplined these writers were. Most wrote at the same time every day and had a specific word or page count for their daily goal.

Since then, I’ve tried to infuse my schedule with that kind of discipline. When I’m writing a novel or nonfiction book, I aspire to about 1,000 words a day. I’m not neurotic about it – it’s simply a goal. If I’m a hundred words or so short, but I’m at a propitious stopping point – I’ll stop.

 When I’m writing magazine stories, I have a different approach. One day I go over my notes and write a lede. The next day, I write a solid section of the story. On the third day, I try to finish the piece and write a compelling ending. If I try to write too much of the story in one sitting, the writing becomes wooden and I lose momentum.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve read about writing is from Hemingway, and it is not how much to write, but when to stop writing. This is Hemingway’s advice on how to maintain writing momentum and avoid writer’s block: The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck.

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I like having a word count goal if I'm working on a specific project. Generally I'll aim for anywhere between 500-1000 words per day and if I miss a day or fall short I am gracious with myself and, instead of self-shaming, just make it up the next day. 

I also journal daily regardless of whether I'm working on something specific or not. The daily journaling practice builds my writing muscles and makes writing an intuitive rather than a stressful process. Recently I've realized that the reason I used to stress about writing is because I relied on my analytical mind rather than my soul/intuition to do it. 

-Masha Udensiva-Brenner, author

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For my magazine pieces and all my books until the current one, I have written 600 words a day. That's a ten-hour day writing 100 words an hour, with time to work up to speed, time for breaks, and time allocated for wiggle room. When I hit 600 words, I stop, even in mid-sentence. Tomorrow is another day. 

Very, very, very important note: My process is to do all the research and reporting -- AND outlining -- in advance of settling in to write. So in talking about writing 600 words a day, I'm talking about deciding on paragraph structure, phrasing, and word choice. I focus kind of obsessively on structure and the mechanics of sentences. Doing that for 600 words of prose is a day of hard work. 

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I try to write something in my journal every week and when I'm doing well, I do. If I have a little silence, then I increase my goal to every other day.  When I am very lonely and not too overwhelmed with work, I try for something every day. 

I set myself the lowest of goals: I write the date, the location and the weather. Usually that helps me to go on. I always -- really almost always-- write when I am on airplanes or trains or long distance buses. I make myself take out my journal and review what stood out for me -- whether that was to Iraq or New York City; a quick trip to St. Denis (a suburb of Paris, then I write on the Metro/going and returning) or returning from the soul-less city of Dubai.  

Somehow as I leave one place and head to another, it is like that moment after waking, when you still remember a little of your dream and it shimmers and you can hold it in your mind's eye for a moment. 

Sometimes these entries are 1000 words, sometimes 200, but I try to note each incident that stood out. These entries always stop before I am done because I become tired or the memory becomes bogged down with the details rather than the translucence that turned it into something special in my mind.  This is true of good and bad memories. Sometimes it's a line or two of dialogue.  Sometimes I just am trying to find the words for some feeling I had. But those moments of journey are my most sacred time for writing. 

-Alissa J. Rubin, The New York Times

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The first and most obvious benefit of having a word count is that it's an inducement to write. If I weren't facing a requirement to write a given number of words, I would never write ANY words. I'd nap. 

Another and perhaps more important advantage of a word count is that it tells you when you're done for the day. It gives you permission to leave the project for the rest of the day, clear your head, do something you enjoy more than writing, and sleep with a clear conscience. When I meet my quota for the day, a factory bell rings in my head, and I pack up and go home, figuratively. Time to go bowling! 

Ironically, I tend to get my best ideas for the next day's writing during that down time. Win/win/win.

-David Hajdu, author and professor

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I don’t have a daily quota but I feel good with 1000 words and better with five pencil covered pages.

-Tanya Luhrman, author and professor

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No fixed limit: I write in spurts.  1000 words a day is a good day.  But then those words have to be polished and sharpened, and that takes 3x as long.

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And finally…from James Robinson, author and master of data analytics, who put together this spreadsheet as he was working on his soon to be published first book, More Than We Expected. 

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