REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE: A WORD ABOUT WORD COUNT.

At the risk of repeating myself, I’ll risk repeating myself. My blog archive is all over the place in a literal digital sense. This blog post feels overly-familiar, but I’ll risk repeating the repeat of a repeat of a repeat…

   This comes up periodically. An obsession with writing so many words a day. Are you writing enough material? Can you write too much in a day? What happens if you don’t write a single word that day?

WORD POLICE: We’re here to check your writing credentials. Papers, please.

WRITER: No papers. I type digitally.

WORD POLICE: We’re not interested in which digits you use for typing.

WRITER: I’m sure there’s a dictaphone joke in there somewhere, but the target audience for that is from 1922.

Let’s clear those writing credentials out of the way. Be ye a writin’, why, a writer be ye. The Word Police hold no jurisdiction over you. If you write fiction, or its city cousin, non-fiction, you are a writer. You needn’t ever publish. If you write stuff and shove it in a drawer, you are a writer.

   Take that writing out of your digital drawer, brush off the electronic dust, and expose that work to the light of day.

   Never deter writers who are hobbyists. For these Germanic caterpillars may, one day, turn into beautiful butterflies. Or homicidal bats – could be that sort of story. Hungry German caterpillar declares that he will, one day, turn into a beautiful homicidal bat-creature.

   How much should you write a day?

   What are you writing? A novel. We’ll stamp it with the legal certification of 75,000 words. There’s a near-mythical level of daily wordage thrown around as if it’s heading out of stock and you should all scoop it up before it goes bye-bye. (That’s 1,000 words a day.)

   Day in, day out, write 1,000 words a day every single day and…75 days later you’ve written a novel. There’s nothing good or bad in this novel-sized number or the rate of knots at which you attack it. You lose a few days to life’s problems, but you get there. Don’t get there gasping.

   The quality of the novel is irrelevant. Its existence as a novel is far more useful to you than any notion of its quality, for you have typed the thing into being. That’s a start. One done.

   If you drop a rancid turd of a novel, at least claim it as your own. Go on to drop a mere turd of a novel next time around. One day you’ll drop solid gold. We’ll chalk that up to the strange alchemy of persistence.

   The act of novel creation is a huge barrier to the novel’s creation. Overcoming that barrier at the speed of 1,000 words a day is the same as overcoming that barrier at higher speed. You type what you type, and you reach the finish. To write a novel takes as long as it takes.

   Can you take it slowly? You won’t write a novel at one word per day, unless you’re a vampire. Feel free to write a novel about a vampire who takes 75,000 days to write a novel – but do it at a faster rate than your undead protagonist is taking on the fictional job.

   Life derails your typing efforts. Stories with an element of historical accuracy call for research, lengthening the creative process. Inventing a bullshit world that sidesteps the need for pesky historical research is no quick fix…you risk spending longer inventing a fake history than you would boning up on the real stuff.

   Daily wordage is divided into four camps: nothing, not enough, enough, and – whoah, Nellie – thrombosis in the depths of your veins.

   Going back a week to another universe, I wrote nothing of story content while digitally scribbling a long complex answer to a writer who wondered how the fuck I was doing – her phrasing, not mine. Before long, I’d rattled out two thousand words.

   Life stepped in my path, and I had to break off. The finished response would’ve climbed to four thousand words, but I gave myself a deadline for answering her – answer her before she thinks you are dead.

   Random things happen every single day, and night, and in the middle of the effing night. You still find time to write, though. UNTIL…random things collide, explode, and consume the universe of time at your disposal. Then you write nothing that day.

   And it’s okay.

   While it is possible to catch up, heed this advice: don’t. No, don’t catch up. That’s right. Don’t try to catch up by aiming at a number of words. There is no daily word count. It’s a fiction. And a radioactive one, at that. Remember these things: nothing, not enough, enough, and DVT.

   Presumably, you write for the sake of the words…and not for a cluster of numbers.

   If you want to write more, write more…more story, more plot, more description, more character. Don’t hang a number around your neck. It’ll strangle you.

   Increasing your word count means doing away with the number obsession. How to write, without being obsessed by numbers? Have a look at numbers, by all means, but quit the obsession before it seizes you. Learn to type more quickly. The alternative is to type for more hours. That third option hovering in the background is both: type faster for longer. Sitting typing for more hours a day is a challenge for which your body is not yet prepared. I’ve gone over this ground before, but it is worth repeating…

   There are plenty of wrong ways to write books, and almost all of those you’ll discover by yourself as you invent stories. This learning-on-the-job is essential if you are to write. Out of a list of wrong ways to write books, the most wrong method is to write a book that generates hazard to life and limb in the writing of it.

   Top Tip: don’t die writing your book – that’s the wrongest of wrong ways to go about things.

   If you are keen on increasing your daily wordage, first abandon the notion that you must count what you type. Yes, have a vague plan. It’s worthwhile to check the word count at reasonable intervals. You want to write a decent-sized tale of 75,000 words. And you know you tell a good short story inside 5,000 words.

   That’s what you start with. Your plan is to write a chapter using a set-up of 2,500 words with a resolution that’s about the same again. Fifteen chapters. You tell yourself you’ll handle half a chapter a day. After a month, barring interruptions, if you do your half-chapter in one day every damned day, then you are happy.

   A page takes up 300 to 400 words – nearer 300 if using snappy dialogue with almost no description, and veering into 400 with more description. Formatting comes into it…

*

There you go. I reduced the word count of a page by a tenth with a transition from that scene to this. We’ll pretend you are writing 300 words a page. After eight pages, you’re about halfway through that chapter. Set-up is done. Day’s end. Check the word count. Don’t fret about it.

   Next day. Chapter resolution. Another eight pages or so. Day’s end. Chapter’s end. If you are happy with the way the story went, don’t panic about that word count. Check it. Don’t be ruled by it.

   There are plenty of writers who cannot (and should not) be constrained by the concept of regular-sized chapters. For those scribblers, the story unfurls in this large chunk, and that tiny follow-up, and those multifaceted diversions, with a long chapter leading to a slick wrap-up that concludes the saga in a modest two pages right at the finishing-post. Uniform chapters are not for all. Hell, you needn’t use chapters if that’s how you want to work.

   Considering word count by itself is fatal. How fast do you type and how many hours do you put in? Is there a set finishing-post or are you planning not to plan the exact sell-by date? Do you feel up to writing for long stretches? Then stretch…out of the chair.

   What do I mean when I say writing is physically draining and you should train up for it first? Exactly that. If you leave your chair feeling exhausted every single time you leave that chair, then you are in trouble. Regular breaks. Exercise: take the pain, and whatever gain is going. If writing doesn’t work out for you, at least you’re fitter.

*

Nothing. Not enough. Enough. Whoah, Nellie.

   On certain uncertain days, you’ll write nothing. And that’s okay. A writer is always on the job, and you plan what you’ll write while you are in the dentist’s chair. Time away from writing is time spent thinking about writing. Word count? Nothing. It’s okay.

   Scrappy days come along in droves. You never quite hit your imaginary stride, whatever that is, and you don’t write enough. Word count? Not enough. This is the tricky one. You write what you write, and you feel it isn’t enough come day’s end. It’s a feeling. Little more than that. Next day, you’ll almost always view things differently…unless you genuinely didn’t write enough. Okay. So write more.

   Regular days unfold before you. You get the job done. Word count? Enough. This concept is the dangerous one. If you are hitting a daily quota mechanically, ask yourself if the story reads that way. Don’t worry over numbers. It’s what you do with the words you write. Okay, so, you type 60 words per minute, and an hour later you’ve hit 3,600 words. Were they any good? That’s unknowable. Even in this unknowable territory, there’s a yawning chasm of a difference between writing and great typing.

   There’s a world of great typing that’s not great writing – it’s grating reading.

   If you must obsess over numbers, buy a lottery ticket. When you write enough, you shouldn’t still be worrying over word count.

   And then there’s the other word count.

   Too much. I don’t mean being wordy. Whoah, Nellie. I mean you run the risk of keeling over dead from writing and writing and writing and writing. Take regular breaks away from the chair. Stay hydrated. Eat food. Fall in and out of soapy water. Take note of peculiar sensations – pounding headaches, detached ears, the popping of a knee and the clatter of your lower leg hitting the floor. Trails of blood festooning the walls.

*

What the hell is my experience and what’s that worth to you?

   I had a load of appointments converge in an unholy alliance, and the day was shot to hell. Word count: nothing. This is, to use a technical term, fucking unavoidable. I could skip those dental appointments to get more writing done, though I harbour a suspicion that I’d end up writing about all my teeth deserting me.

   So much for getting nothing written. Scrappy days swarm around like flies on a mission. I wrote a bit. Not enough. Word count: 1,000. The start to a scene, and not the chapter I aimed for. Though this lack of writing could lead to an overall disjointed feel on reading the completed chapter, don’t panic. Something obvious occurs to you overnight, and the stuttering start to your writing one day gives you a breather before hitting your form the next day.

   Don’t obsess over the numbers. You are in the words game.

   A good day. Rattled out 5,000 words. Wrote that chapter. Yes, I wrote enough. There’s nothing to analyse or dissect there. Beyond writing enough, there’s the business of risk to life and limb.

   Where does the risk of DVT come into it? I’ve never gone far enough into the wilderness to find out. Eat, drink, and walk around a lot. You can still think through your writing while taking important breaks from typing.

   I wrote 10,000 words a week for one novel. That was bundled up in research, slowing the pace. I wrote the bulk of a chapter over five days, always keeping two days in reserve for interruptions. And I used those extra days every week. Either life intervened or I jumped into editing. Both.

   Anything shy of 10,000 words? I added to a leaner piece. But if I went over my rough guide, the story went with me. Up to a point. There was an awkward fortnight in which I wrote the chapter that would not die. I spent twice as long on that stretch of the book and wrote, surprise, shock, horror, twice as much. There was a fix in editing. A hacksaw.

   For another book, I wrote 10,000 words a day. Take breaks. Stay hydrated. For fuck’s sake stop when you are tired and go to sleep. I tackled this blog post late one night and just shut the damned thing down. Too tired. Knew it. Stopped. LEARN THIS AND LIVE BY IT: if you wouldn’t fucking drive that tired, don’t write that tired.

   When writing at that pace, around 10,000, it is easy to cross over into 15,000 words a day for a few days. Everything comes together and you roar along the railway on an express train. This is fine. I don’t find that pace sustainable for more than a few days. Your express is liable to hit a curve and go crashing off.

   If the writing fever is upon you, yes, just run with it. Don’t develop a genuine fever, though. It’s not enough to take breaks from the chair. You must take breaks from the office itself. From the town you are in. Hell, sometimes from the country you are in. I’ve made the occasional interplanetary voyage, but the Alien Hive said I shouldn’t mention that in public or in the fourth dimension.

   Already, at 15,000 words in a day your writing will need significantly more editing than 10,000 words will. The more ideas crash onto the page, the greater the fun and the lesser the logic to what you are typing. Don’t obsess over the words, but develop an awareness of what word count means at feverish levels.

   Word count. Any higher than 15,000 daily? Yes. Pulp level. Once you hit 20,000 words a day, you are echoing the era of the pulp writer – presumably minus the mechanical typewriter, booze habit, cigarettes, and battered hat.

   I’m sitting here popping mints like pills that should never be popped, and sloshing my way through more coffee than I care to think about. This blog post is brought to you by a pulp-era soundtrack furnished by John Williams. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve stepped away from the keyboard.

   Truth to tell, I’ve lost count of the number of days spent writing this blog post, on and off. My aim is to write 1,500 words at the very least. Let’s hit the button and find out how I fared.

   Word count: 2,500-odd. Well. I’d say that’s enough.

   A word about word count. Don’t obsess over it. Tell a story.

   (I can hit 20,000 words in a day, though I choose not to. And I’ve know writers who passed that level of scribblerisation. It’s unpleasant, even if you prepare for the ordeal. You need a clear run at it. No dental appointments or roadworks outside your door. Expect to knife the outpouring of text from all directions in editing. Rapid writing and the flow of ideas will beat the shit out of logic and continuity at that frantic pace. Go back in later with a flamethrower and fix things.)

   If you obsess over daily word count, that’s your obsession. Especially if you take no account of your typing speed or the time spent writing. Gain a rough idea. Don’t gain a rough time. Avoid death by typing. There are more pleasant ways to go. Mints and coffee are ganging up to kill me. They’re just waiting for the arrival of the chocolate cake. As am I.