10 Responses so far

1. 1. Rick Novy on Nov 13th, 2009 at 10:38 am

   One decent sized paragraph is about 50 words. If I check my word count every paragraph or so when things are going slow, or whenever I come up for air when things are going well, it’s amazing how fast they add up and how much positive reinforcement it is to see that number going up faster than it feels like it’s moving. works for me, anyway.

2. 2. Phiala on Nov 13th, 2009 at 10:44 am

   That’s one of my favorite productivity hacks for just about everything.

   Write 100 words.
   Wash a few dishes.
   Work on horrid project X for 10 minutes. I can do anything for 10 minutes, right?

   Usually the 100 words will find a few hundred friends, and a few dishes will turn into most of the stack, and I may get 11 or 12 minutes on horrid project X. It’s all better than 10 minutes of solitaire.

3. 3. Scott Roche on Nov 13th, 2009 at 11:04 am

   I often find that if I can just start writing with a small goal in mind, as you suggest, that it kick starts me into writing something linger. But you’re right, even if I stop at 100 it’s progress.

4. 4. Edward Greaves on Nov 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am

   I used to get all worked up about the big word counts, and I found that I struggled so much harder with it. If I missed the goal, I’d get frustrated or angry, and I think it became a barrier unto itself. Now I’ve lowered my goal to 500 words a day, which on most days I can hit in 20-30 minutes of actually sitting and writing. I’ve found it freeing to be able to tick off my daily writing goal in such short order. And then anything else I write that day is bonus work. Who doesn’t like a bonus?

5. 5. Marko Kloos on Nov 13th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

   I had that epiphany a while ago, and now my daily minimum is one lousy page–250 words. Most of the time, I write more, because once I’m in the groove, I’m not likely to stop at that one page.

   (And even if I only ever manage a page a day from here on out: 250 words a day gets you a 91,000-word novel in a year.)

   One of the best productivity hacks ever.

6. 6. Megs on Nov 13th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

   I had a real wake-up call one day when I was asked to estimate the average word count per scene I write. I took an entire manuscript and did my counts. 330.

   Double take.

   330 words?!

   That was my average word count per scene, even taking into account the scenes that went on for pages.

   I don’t knock small word counts anymore. It might just be a whole scene.

7. 7. Mark Terry on Nov 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

   Sometimes you just need to prime the pump. When I was working a day job and I might not feel like writing, even if it was 10:30 at night I’d say, “Just go down and write a page. It’ll take you 10 minutes and you’ll be done.” And most of the time I’d end up writing a lot more than a page.

8. 8. Will Hindmarch on Nov 13th, 2009 at 7:12 pm

   This is wonderful. I’ve been trying this trick lately where I write based on in-fiction milestones, instead of word count, but it’s only sometimes a boon. I’ll switch to a 100-500 word milestone count for the next week and see if there’s a noticeable shift in my recreational-writing productivity.

9. 9. Megs on Nov 15th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

   I’m not sure what was wrong with my comment, but maybe it just didn’t get picked up. (My computer does that sometimes.)

   Just wanted to agree that 100 words is nothing to knock because as a girl that writes an average of 330 words per scene, 100 words might BE an entire scene.

10. 10. Steve Buchheit on Nov 16th, 2009 at 7:39 pm

    I love those 2000 word days, but I’ll take the 100 word days as well. They’re better than the 0 days.