Writers, what’s your word count for the day come out to? 2,000 words? 5,000 words? More? Or do you write until you can’t write anymore and then come back the next day? I ask this question because I’ve been seeing Laurel K. Hamilton post on Twitter how she writes 4 or 5 pages a day some days and others, she writes more.If we break down word count to get a page count, the average trade paperback romance has 250 -300 words per page, so let’s take the lesser of the two values to determine page count.
Therefore, if you write 2,000 words, you’ve written eight pages. Is this truly important to you? Or can you deal with only having written four (or about 1,000 words) for the day/writing time.
Now without knowing Mrs. Hamilton’s schedule and anything about her life (I’m sure this information is on her website or in various interviews, but she’s a busy woman. If you’ve read either of her series, you know she writes very in depth first person action oriented dark romances. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Hamilton’s books are very heavy in plot, events that happen and contain a great deal of police work involved, so the research she puts into her novels to make them believable is where a large portion of her time is spent.
I read an article from Melinda Rucker Hayes that says many authors have methods in place such as calendar scheduling, striving to write ten pages a night, etc to help them accomplish their writing goals.
For example, Katie MacAllistar and Rebecca York set word count goals for the day. I’m sure if they don’t meet them, it’s not the end of the world.
My question is, why are we driven so hard as authors to try to nail 10k in a day and then keep up that pace? I recently interviewed Brenna Lyons for Radio Dentata and she told me the worst month she had was when she had to edit 160k novel on top of writing 65k of NEW MATERIAL.
It made me realize why I’ve been slacking since the Cybernet Expo. The previous week I’d recorded a show or two, had conducted interviews, spent time with my publisher at Renaissance E-books talking about Cybernet Expo and writing roughly 25k for two different stories in JUST seven days. I’m only NOW back to putting in a full day that doesn’t exactly include my goal of 2,500 words a day because of what’s happened since then.
I think last week I managed about 5k total. I’ve edited 40k on two different stories and have managed to get through another 50k of words worth of galley copy of my first book to go to print (that’ll be another article) in addition to commitments like this blog and the radio show.
Just looking at the above list, it looks like I’ve accomplished something doesn’t it. It looks like it VALIDATES my career as a romance writer.
Does it?
Or does my claim of that as a job/career validate me?
You make the call. I’d love your feedback.
