2500 words a day [Archive] - Absolute Write Water Cooler

panda

10-01-2009, 09:57 AM

Well, I average about 10 words a day, so I'll finish by 2030 lol.

Academic is easy, there's no creative component to it, especially when you're younger you're just reporting on what others have done, not a lot of critical thinking or application/synthesis.

2500/day seems a bit steep to me, but if you can do this please share how. :D

kct webber

10-01-2009, 11:01 AM

I'm the opposite, actually. 2500 words of fiction is a few hours work for me. I find it pretty easy. Academic writing takes me a lot longer.

katiemac

10-01-2009, 11:05 AM

Yeah, if I'm being serious, 2500 is pretty standard. I can usually write between 850 to 1200 words in a half hour, so a half hour early and another later in the day can get me to 2500 easily enough. If it's straining your brain then don't try to get it all down at once.

kaitie

10-01-2009, 11:15 AM

I don't really have a problem writing out that much at once, depending on the part I'm in of course. It's not that unusual for me to get twenty-five pages in a day if I've got the time and the idea is already sorted out enough in my mind. Sometimes it's just throwing words on paper and doesn't take any effort whatsoever. Sometimes I get more like 500~800 words, and that's still a good day.

Everyone is different. I personally don't set daily word goals. I don't even necessarily make it a goal to write every day. Sometimes I need time off, or have too many other things to do to worry about it. Then again, I'm pretty self-disciplined and can get it done. Some people need a daily word count to pull off BIC.

I agree with katiemac. Try to set a goal that might be a bit challenging but doesn't leave you frustrated. If it's too irritating then you'll lose motivation to do it. You just have to find what works for you.

BriMaresh

10-01-2009, 11:41 AM

I do about 2,500 most days (weekends, I do a lot more). It's not hard so long as you have some idea of where you are going. I'm not an outliner (pantser, honest!) but I do think about my novel in all my idle moments, so I always have some idea of what I want to do next. I think, if I had no idea, it would be an awful lot harder.

ORION

10-01-2009, 11:43 AM

I range between 1000 and 2000 a day- less if I'm editing - then I go by chapters...

motormind

10-01-2009, 12:20 PM

I can easily get twice that amount when I use voice recognition software, but the speed is diminished a bit by the fact that the thing usually guesses about twenty per cent of the words wrong. Damn my accent!

timewaster

10-01-2009, 12:25 PM

My daily target when I'm working on a novel is between 1,000, and 3500 a day depending on how well it is going and what kind of rush I am in. When I am not working on a novel I don't usually write anything but I have recently started 500 words before breakfast as a daily target which is quite useful.
Unless you are a person who has trouble keeping the story moving it isn't usually about quantity but quality - some people work better at pace and others like to reflect. More is not necessarily better and the danger with a high daily word target is that you pad your work with unnecessary stuff which just has to be taken out later.
So no - it's not a huge amount for some people but if it produces pointless word bloat it could be too much for you. It depends on the individual.

blacbird

10-01-2009, 12:57 PM

My output today:

Shit shit shit shit shit. Shit shit shit! Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit, shit shit shit shit shit.

Shit shit.

Shit?

"Shit," shit shit.

Shit shit shit, shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

Shit.

Now I only have 2458 words to go to equal your output. I'll be up late, apparently.

caw

Telstar

10-01-2009, 01:28 PM

I wish I could write that much. Unless i sit all day long (rarely happened).
I average 500-1500.

Stijn Hommes

10-01-2009, 01:58 PM

Our current writing is held to a higher standard than our high school essays. That's why writing the same amount of words takes us longer now. Writing fiction requires inclusion of good characters and plots while the essays required only some written opinion, none of the creativity novelwriting involves.

maestrowork

10-01-2009, 03:24 PM

Is that too much writing? 2,500 is the legth of the essays you'd write in high school on the night before the essay was due, how come 2,500 is so hard to crank out in one day/night, but boring things like academic essays aren't as hard?

If you can sustain that kind of output, go for it.

I tried to set a goal of 1000 words a day and it was difficult for me to sustain that -- I'd write for a day or two, then stop for a week. It was deflating to a point I might not write for days.

So now I scaled back and said I would write 500 words a day.

So far I've written over 20K words (just on the WIP). So it's definitely working much better for me.

And it certainly depends on your writing style, how much you know your story already, etc. I'm kind of a perfectionist, so even though I told myself I could write crap and so just write, I still overthink what I write because I know if I don't do it right, I'll just work so much harder during rewrites anyway. So it's either front-loaded or back-loaded.

CaroGirl

10-01-2009, 06:52 PM

Charlie Horse

10-01-2009, 06:53 PM

Sorry, don't mean to be a grouchy puss, but these threads where we all start comparing daily output is like deja vu all over again. Aren't there like a bajillion similar threads on this forum? In the end someone will determine that everyone's daily output is different and that whatever standard you uphold to should be the one that brings you closer to your goal.

lauraannwilliams

10-01-2009, 07:18 PM

I remember pounding out essays and papers in school with ease. English? ( or Language Arts in my younger days ) - the easiest subject in the world. All I had to do was read something, and write about it. I'd get a six page essay out and still have time to go back and check for spelling errors. Flying!

I think there's a couple of differences between then and now that make writing so much more difficult.

First, I knew my subject then - my subject was often simply my own opinion "what do I think about this?", and figuring out what came next was easy. In my current WIP I keep running across those ' what happens next ' moments that I can't seem to solve right away. Big stumbling block.

The second big difference for me is I now have a loud and bossy internal editor. I never used to worry about sentence structure or varying my openings or pacing ect. Rewriting? Editing? These things were unheard of. You wrote your paper, typed it up, turned it in, and never thought of it again. Now I'm playing wack-a-mole with my editor while I'm writing ( shush! I fix later! Yes, yes, this is crap. Be quiet anyway! ).

I think that one of the things that keeps me writing right now is remembering how smooth and fun it was back then. I figure, I had years of practice learning how to write assignments and term papers and the like. This writing every day thing, I've only been back at for a few months - sooner or later, it has to click.

ChaosTitan

10-01-2009, 09:26 PM

I've always been more fond of weekly goals, than daily goals. Some days can be dedicated to writing, other days I'm busy from waking to bedtime. But by looking at a weekly goal, I'm better able to let myself off the hook for a busy day and make up for it another time.

As long as you're getting words on paper, do whatever you can manage.

Phaeal

10-01-2009, 09:33 PM

Phaeal

10-01-2009, 09:39 PM

I have a word goal of 1000 words a day when I'm turning out fresh copy. I can push myself as high as 1667-3500 during NaNoWriMo, but for the long haul, that's too much for me.

I tend to write smooth first drafts fairly close to the finished product. It's during the free-wheeling free-writing planning stage that I put out lots of pages a session.

One of the most important things you can learn about yourself as a writer is how many words you can produce in a session/day without burning out. Because it's not the one-day or once-in-a-while word count that matters in the end. It's that you can keep going, week after week, month after month, year after year.

ishtar'sgate

10-01-2009, 09:45 PM

Is that too much writing? 2,500 is the legth of the essays you'd write in high school on the night before the essay was due, how come 2,500 is so hard to crank out in one day/night, but boring things like academic essays aren't as hard?
Some days I struggle through 250 words! Other days 2,500 is a short day. For me it simply depends upon where I am in the story and how difficult a scene I'm working on. Some days the words flow like water, other days not so much.

Tara Stone

10-01-2009, 10:44 PM

I can do 2500 words of fiction a day without much of a problem; I'm a fast writer. 2500 words of nonfiction, though, is another story. I've always found academic essays harder than fiction, personally.

seun

10-01-2009, 11:30 PM

I don't think wordcounts are that important. OK, you might get a sense of achievement if you knock out however many words in one go, but quality is more important that quantity.

bettielee

10-02-2009, 12:50 AM

LuckyH

10-02-2009, 01:04 AM

When I'm working on a project I aim for a minimum of six hours writing a day, which equates to ten pages and around 3,000 words. It's hard most of the time, but sometimes fills me with absolute joy.

I can't write a novel in less than a concentrated year, but I acknowledge that lots of people can, and I admire them. We're all different, luckily, today is the publishing day of the year for the Christmas season, I read somewhere that 800 new novels are being published today.

It sounds a lot, but my telephone, email and website remain deadly silent.

cscarlet

10-02-2009, 02:26 AM

2,500 words in one sitting isn't difficult for me to do at all. The difference is, I write about once (MAYBE twice) per week. Some weeks not at all. I'm just too busy with work. But if writing WAS my job I don't think I'd have any trouble at all punching out 2,500 per day.

Now, actually writing something I'm happy with is a totally different story ;)

Mara

10-02-2009, 03:10 AM

Immediate deadlines drastically increase my writing output. :) I can write 5000 words a day if I need to, especially if I know the result will be decent. (I'm good at writing academic papers.) Also, when there's a deadline, you stop worrying about little concerns like writing crap.

Writing narrative fiction? I'm lucky to get 750 words a day when I really try hard. There's no deadline, I'm not as good at it, and I don't have anything to force me to ignore my fear of writing something that sucks.

Charissa

10-02-2009, 08:14 AM

My output today:

Shit shit shit shit shit. Shit shit shit! Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit, shit shit shit shit shit.
Shit shit.
Shit?
"Shit," shit shit.
Shit shit shit, shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.
Shit.

Now I only have 2458 words to go to equal your output. I'll be up late, apparently.

caw

- This is arguably the funniest thing I've read all week. Blacbird, you've made my day...

Nick Blaze

10-02-2009, 12:03 PM

When writing Enter the Glade, I do not know what I averaged. I tried for one page a day (about 1,000 words). However, some days I did 10,000 words. Actually, three days in a row I did 10,000 words. That's a ridiculous amount. Other days, I may have had 100. I might have been lucky for 100 in two days. All depended on when my muse decided to be inspired.

A steady pace is best, so you're not where I'm at now. I'm lucky to write 1,000 words a MONTH. It's mostly due to my lack of computer access, my location, work, struggling with editing, struggling with finances, and the like, but even under all of this, when I stare at a page, I see what needs to be written but cannot write it. Oh, well. When things calm down a bit, it might be easier.

panda

10-02-2009, 12:07 PM

However, some days I did 10,000 words. Actually, three days in a row I did 10,000 words.

Dang, what were you on? And can I have some, lol? ;)

Chasing the Horizon

10-02-2009, 12:42 PM

2000-2500 words a day is about right for me--when I'm not screwing around procrastinating on AW, anyway.

It was easier when I was new to writing and didn't worry about it being crap. But it actually was crap then, so . . . :D

I have outlines and always know what will happen next, so my only excuse for not writing it down is laziness. Not a very good excuse, so I tend to keep my word count up.

motormind

10-02-2009, 12:49 PM

When writing Enter the Glade, I do not know what I averaged. I tried for one page a day (about 1,000 words)

Your page layout must be cramped. A thousand words is usually worth about 4 pages.

My output fluctuates between 100-5000 words a day. I have hit high spots of 8000 words on one day, but I usually ended up running around drooling, wanting to eat brains.

Nick Blaze

10-02-2009, 12:49 PM

Dang, what were you on? And can I have some, lol? ;)
Inspiration, I suppose. But if you do end up writing that much in a day, here's what you actually wrote: crap. While in it there will be a good, well-written chapter or two, it's usually chop full of typos, messed up plot points, plot holes in general, and a little bit of uselessness.

Even so, it gets you through tough/easy areas so you can work on the rest of your novel. It's an accomplishment that may be about 8 hours of straight writing. (there went my weekend. :P)

thethinker42

10-02-2009, 12:50 PM

Is that too much writing?

No. As long as you're not sacrificing quality for quantity and you're not burning yourself out, there's no such thing as too much. I write full-time and my daily quota is 5,000. Sometimes I'll do 8-10,000, but usually it's between 5-7,000. Find the pace that's realistic for you, that you can sustain in the long term, and stick with that.

2,500 is the legth of the essays you'd write in high school on the night before the essay was due, how come 2,500 is so hard to crank out in one day/night, but boring things like academic essays aren't as hard?

I'm the opposite. I could crank out an essay the night before it was due, but never had any illusions that it was decent writing, and it wasn't easy. The boredom made it absolute agony sometimes...I don't need car chases and explosions to keep my interest, but damn, my attention span can only handle so much over-analyzing of symbolism in literature or whether or not Napoleon Bonaparte dressed to the right. Writing a novel has its difficult and dull moments, but I can't say it's resulted in wanting to hang myself with my mouse cord like some of those high school papers did.

Nick Blaze

10-02-2009, 12:51 PM

Your page layout must be cramped. A thousand words is usually worth about 4 pages.

My output fluctuates between 100-5000 words a day. I have hit high spots of 8000 words on one day, but I usually ended up running around drooling, wanting to eat brains.
Times New Roman, 10-font, 1-inch margins on a typical computer page. That'll change for publication, I suppose, but I like 1k words a page. It makes it easier to guage just how much I wrote without comparing and recomparing word counts.

thethinker42

10-02-2009, 12:58 PM

But if you do end up writing that much in a day, here's what you actually wrote: crap. While in it there will be a good, well-written chapter or two, it's usually chop full of typos, messed up plot points, plot holes in general, and a little bit of uselessness.

Watch your generalizations...this sort of thing depends on the individual writer. My 10th thousand of the day is no better or worse than my 1st. In fact, some of my best work is produced on my 10,000+ days, because those are the days when it flows. If I'm writing 10K in a day, it means I'm on a roll. It usually needs some tidying up, as any first draft does, but no more than usual.

My first draft betas will back me on this one: They can't tell the difference between a chapter written on a 10K, 8K, 5K, or the rare angsty 1K day. I'm the same writer, and the writing stays the same no matter how fast, how slow, how much, or how little I write. That's why I aim for high quantities every day: I know I can do it, so I don't allow myself to make excuses not to do it.

Speed and high output do not automatically equate to sloppy, crappy writing.

Nick Blaze

10-02-2009, 01:05 PM

They don't always, but they more than often do. I did generalize and for that I apologize. It is true that some poets write their best poems when they've already written 40 in the same day. It is also true that for others, only one of those poems may be remotely good.

Bluegate

10-02-2009, 01:16 PM

I think we might all have various definitions for "crap." One writers crap may mean he has typos and plot holes another writer's may mean it isn't directly ready for print. Everyone has their own brand of crap.

blacbird

10-02-2009, 01:18 PM

the essays required only some written opinion, none of the creativity novelwriting involves.

Not in the university English composition class I teach.

caw

Bluegate

10-02-2009, 01:19 PM

panda

10-02-2009, 01:29 PM

scarletpeaches

10-02-2009, 03:18 PM

Inspiration, I suppose. But if you do end up writing that much in a day, here's what you actually wrote: crap. While in it there will be a good, well-written chapter or two, it's usually chop full of typos, messed up plot points, plot holes in general, and a little bit of uselessness.

Even so, it gets you through tough/easy areas so you can work on the rest of your novel. It's an accomplishment that may be about 8 hours of straight writing. (there went my weekend. :P)Here's what you just posted in 88 words: crap.

Capes&Corsets

10-02-2009, 03:21 PM

It all depends for me. I'm currently finishing my book and have been managing 2000-3000 a day over the past week or so.

Then I checked out the first assignment I have to do at university. My thoughts? 'This is going to take me fecking forever.' :(

scarletpeaches

10-02-2009, 03:22 PM

- This is arguably the funniest thing I've read all week. Blacbird, you've made my day...It stops being funny when you've read his 500th post dogging on himself in a day.

megan_d

10-02-2009, 04:02 PM

I disagree, I enter every thread anticipating blacbird's little ray of sunshine, and it makes me laugh every time.

James81

10-02-2009, 05:56 PM

I did NaNoWriMo once and to reach 50K in one month, I had to do 1700 words per day. That was a challenge. Oh, I had days where I did more than that (the last day I did 8000 words in one day), but consistently doing 1700 words per day over 30 days was a challenge.

Can't imagine raising the bar on that.

UNLESS you are talking about more than one project.

If you count blogging, WIPS, and message boards, I probably average like 10,000 words per day. lol

scarletpeaches

10-02-2009, 05:59 PM

I've just worked out that my daily average for this project is 1680 a day, and I'm already well over 105k on this. So that's like two NaNos without even trying. Maybe I've discovered my default. I know I can do more, but this is my 'don't have to try' setting. Hope to raise the bar though.

DrZoidberg

10-02-2009, 06:13 PM

If I get to count all the words I remove 2500 a day is nothing. But some days I end up with less words than I started. But a much better text. My rule is to write a minimum of 1000 words per day. I usually write a lot more. Especially on weekends. I've kept it up for almost two years now, and I'm producing tonnes of work. If it's any good is another matter.

maestrowork

10-02-2009, 08:13 PM

Instead of saying "write ____ words every day" why don't we just say, "write every day"?

To me, this X amount of words is arbitrary and should fit the writer. To some, 10000 words a day is easy. To some, 500 words is a struggle. But the key point is: write every day. Set your own pace. Don't dread it if what you write is crap. But write.

And it's not a "competition." Only you know how fast or slow or hard or easy. At the end, only the QUALITY of the manuscript matters. Not a whole lot of agents or publishers care if you finished it in 2 weeks, 3 months or 5 years (well, unless you're under contract and you HAVE to finish it by a deadline -- but that's a different issue).

So, eliminate that "2500" and plug in your own number, and make it WORK for you.

Straka

10-02-2009, 08:49 PM

I've spent days, nay weeks working on a scene that was only 2500 words long. Then again I wrote 10K in 6 six hours. Quality vs. quantity.

So basically stop worrying about silly little things like that and just write.

motormind

10-03-2009, 01:26 AM

I did NaNoWriMo once and to reach 50K in one month, I had to do 1700 words per day. That was a challenge. Oh, I had days where I did more than that (the last day I did 8000 words in one day), but consistently doing 1700 words per day over 30 days was a challenge.

I did the NaNoWriMo last year and practically breezed through it. I can't remember I had any difficulty writing throughout that whole month. Now, I hoped to keep it up more or less the month after that--and boy, was I wrong. It just stopped. And it took me several months to pick that WIP up again and get it into shape.

TereLiz

10-03-2009, 01:26 AM

Most days, 2500 words is brutal to me, especially when I'm bogged down in the middle, which is, of course, where I'm at for my current wip. But there were days when I was flying through the manuscript at about 3K per day, but that was usually on successive Saturdays, the one day I can really get a lot of writing done.

On a normal day, if I get 100 words, I'm happy. I don't count what I write in my notebook, which sometimes amounts to several thousand words that will never see the light of day.

Libbie

10-03-2009, 03:03 AM

Is that too much writing? 2,500 is the legth of the essays you'd write in high school on the night before the essay was due, how come 2,500 is so hard to crank out in one day/night, but boring things like academic essays aren't as hard?

Too much? 2500 is my daily minimum.

Like anything else, writing will become easier for you (relatively speaking) the more you practice it. So write every day, even when it's really hard. It will get...less hard. With time.

Mister Cheech

10-03-2009, 08:47 AM

I can write about 10,000 words a day when I'm really into a story.

Cliff Face

10-03-2009, 09:24 AM

Wow, 10k a day... never reached that much.

Although I did average about 3k a day for a week or so a couple of months ago. Wrote half a book, and was happy with what was written. I think the only reason I managed to write so much and so consistently was because the entire time I was infatuated with being a full-time writer, even though I've never been paid for my writing before, and I wanted to see what rate I could write at.

I think in my case, the days when I can only do 500 words, those are the ones that will get chopped in editing more than the days where I wrote 3.5k...

I usually write in short bursts - half hours or hours, never more than that. So when I was writing 3k a day, I'd write 1k and then turn the computer off and do something else, then repeat a couple of times. For some reason the most I've ever written for my WIPs in a single sitting is about 1500.

If I could write 3k in a sitting, then I have no doubt I could reach 10k a day, but I'd be burned out. And even though I was writing 3k a day for a while, since then I've written about 7k in a month and a half... Burn out.

Cliff