Friday, April 25, 2014

Writing - Word Count

I keep track of how many words I write a day. I don't quite know why I do it, but it has become a habit after so many years of writing. I think I began keeping track back when I started writing. I think I was curious to see how many words I wrote a day, so I started counting. When I started writing, I wrote by hand and in notebooks, so I would have to go back and count by hand (usually I would count the words in a few lines and then count the lines and multiply it by the average of the first few lines). Now I write exclusively on a digital device (usually my Chromebook) so that I can easily count up the words I write.

Is it a good idea to keep track of how many words you write a day? I think it is. It gives you a goal to shoot for. It turns out that I am not alone. Mark Twain wrote about 1000 words a day. Stephen King writes 2000 words every day no matter what day it is. Then there is one of my favorite writers, Lee Child who averages 1800 words a day. If you are writing, give it a try. Keep track of how many words you write in a day and then set a goal for yourself. When I started I wanted to write I set a goal of 500 words a day. I have now pushed that up to 2000 words. Last month (March 2014) was a good writing month in that I wrote 80,000 words (over 2500 words a day). So far this month I have written over 60,000 words. How awesome is that?

What do you think?

No comments:

Post a Comment