How many pages can you write a day?

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Becky Black

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I've just had an exceptionally productive weekend where I got about 10,000 words across the two days, about five hours of work a day. That's maybe 30 standard pages? That was a lot though. Weekends are more usually about 3k a day and work days about 1.5k. (Totals go up for NaNoWriMo though, when I get the red mist in my eyes. :D)

My record is 10k in one day, but I can't sustain that for long! I envy you having 6 to 8 hours a day to write - I don't get that very often.

One page in 6 to 8 hours does sound very slow, but it depends how you work. Do you edit and polish that page until its perfect before moving on? Do you have no outline so you've got to figure out what you actually want to happen on that page? Neither of these things are "wrong" if they are the way you work, but they can make things take a long time. If you want to change this, maybe you can try different methods. Drafting the whole thing and editing later. Working with an outline. It can't hurt to try out different things, even if what you learn from doing so is that they don't suit you.

None of these methods means you'll necessarily do fewer hours of work per story, they just configure the work differently. if I do lots of outlining I (usually) draft faster and do less editing. If I do less outlining I end up with slower drafting and more editing. But in the end I've probably done the same number of hours of work on the book.

But one page a day potentially gives you a completed novel in a year - which is a better rate than some people!
 
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Andieee

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Depends, really. There are days when I can barely write a few sentences and there are some days when I write up to twenty pages. Yestarday, for example, I got sixteen pages written.
 

malamute

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I've also got a full time job so my writing is in the evenings and weekends, I write every day and tend to go between 2k and 10k, depending on how the story grips me, sometimes it takes off and I can't not write because the words simply tumble out, other times I'm like oh dear what next.
 

Dr-I-Know-All

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Yeah, I do anything from 500 words to 30K in a day, just because some things I've drafted and know exactly where they're supposed to go and others not.
 

Dallionz

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It really just depends for me, too. I do try and get about 2,000 a night (I usually only get to write in the evening once the kids are in bed). There have been some nights when I have struggled to get a couple of paragraphs written, and then others where it was closer to 4,000 words.
 

s.j.l

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It really varies for me too. I've been lucky these last few days and have gotten out around 6K a day but some days even 100 seems too hard to hit and then when I get it out I feel like it needs to be scrapped.
 

JimABassPlayer

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Last thing I wrote, I averaged 12 pages a day.*

* On days off from my job. (Significantly less on work days.)
 

Calle Jay

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I try to consistently hit the 5K-a-day during the work week (full-time writer, here), and 2.5K each weekend evening. I'm hoping to up the productivity a bit starting 9/1 when I get my author assistant trained. :) He's taking over the marketing/formatting/social media for me to free up an extra hour or two of writing time.
 

morrighan

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I'm currently doing at least 2K words a day. That's also with me editing my first novel while working on the second to decompress my poor overwhelmed mind, what with a 4 year old running around in the middle of summer...
 

brainstorm77

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It totally depends on the time I have.
 

tashas

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So envious of the speed some of you have! I usually manage about 500-700 words a day. Sometimes I'll cross that into 1000 word territory, but not often.

Saying that, I write a lot faster by hand, so when I do first drafts (which I don't do on the computer) I'm usually bang on 1000 words a day.
 

Sinderion

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If I know what's coming, like today on a final chapter of a novel, 4k comes out easy, even if I want it shorter. If I don't know what's coming? 1.6k can be hard to drag out. I'm happy if I do 3k, which I do most days. My record is 9.5, though it was nano novel related, not horrid quality.

Work your way up slowly in word count, but push yourself. First draft is just for getting out the words. Practice writing techniques, but don't force them in in your actual work. Don't even write for perfection, wait till the rules enforce themselves through your intuition, what's coming straight from your brain. Does that make sense? Of course that requires that you study writing techniques regularly :D
 

AliceWrites

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It's really interesting to see what others class as average days' work. I usually sit down first thing in the morning and I will crank out 2000 words as an average.

If I'm writing (as opposed to editing or re-writing a story), this would be what I would naturally work towards, and I'd be really pushing it to do much more than this. Occasionally, I have written 3000 words, but mostly that's if I'm re-writing something.
 

oceansoul

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Anywhere from 500-2,500 is average for me.

I am a pretty savage cutter of my own work, though. I might write 2,500 words in the day and then discard 2,000 of them on second reading. It makes for slow going.
 

LJD

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For the last thing I wrote (a novelette), I managed 3000-4000 words for 3 days in a row, often writing 1000 words an hour. Which is unusual for me. I think writing on the computer rather than by hand, which is what I usually do, helped a bit.
 
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