Many authors worry about how many words they write every day.\u00a0 Some even post the tally on Facebook as if they’re in some kind of competition.<\/p>\n
And if they’re not writing at least 500 or 1200 or 2000 words or whatever quota they’ve set, they feel miserable.\u00a0 Why aren’t they working harder?\u00a0 Why are they stuck?\u00a0 What’s wrong with them?<\/p>\n
If that kind of system works for you, fine.\u00a0 But I think too many writers start out assuming that if they’re not actually physically writing a set number of words every single day<\/em>, they’re not just slacking, they’re falling behind and even betraying their talent.<\/p>\n Many well-known authors like Ann Lamott (in Bird by Bird<\/em>) advise beginners to hold to a daily minimum, but some days it’s simply not possible.\u00a0 Hell, for some writers it’s never<\/em> possible.\u00a0 Why should it be?<\/p>\n I’ve never advised my creative writing students to write every day; I advise them to try to find the system that works for them<\/em>.<\/p>\n I’ve never worried myself about how much I write every day because I’m almost always writing in my head, and that’s as important as putting things down on a page.<\/p>\n But aside from that, every book has its own unique rhythm.\u00a0 I’m currently finishing a suspense novel and I’ve spent weeks on one chapter.\u00a0 Some would call it obsessing.\u00a0 They’d be wrong.\u00a0 What I’ve been doing is musing, rewriting, stepping back, carefully putting tiles into a mosaic as it were, making sure everything fits right before I go ahead, because this is a crucial chapter.\u00a0 I’ve also been doing some fact-checking because guns are involved and I’ve had to consult experts. I barely have ten pages, yet there are times when I’ve written ten pages in a day on this same book.<\/p>\n The current chapter is the book’s most important one, where the protagonist and his pursuer face off, and it’s got to be right.\u00a0 So when I re-work a few lines that had been giving me trouble and find that now, they finally work, that makes me very happy.<\/p>\n And if I don’t write a word, I know I will be, soon enough. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many authors worry about how many words they write every day.\u00a0 Some even post the tally on Facebook as if they’re in some kind of competition. And if they’re not writing at least 500 or 1200 or 2000 words or whatever quota they’ve set, they feel miserable.\u00a0 Why aren’t they working harder?\u00a0 Why are they … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,3,2],"tags":[11,10,5,8,499,496,495],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice-for-writers","category-publishing","category-writing","tag-ann-lamott","tag-bird-by-bird","tag-books","tag-drafts","tag-facebook","tag-publishing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em><\/p>\n