Word Count, Shmerd Count

Why your writing speed doesn't matter, but creating good habits does

How fast can you type? 80 words per minute? 120? 500? I recently saw someone on Twitter saying that they could write 1000 words per hour. That’s impressive. If that was the only metric that mattered.

Thankfully, it isn’t!

I first became obsessed with word counts after reading Stephen King’s On Writing about twenty years ago, when I read that he writes about 2000 words per day — no matter what. At the time I was logging my daily word counts on a calendar I hung above my desk, which were clocking in at a paltry few hundred or so every few days.

I felt guilty. Ashamed. Ineffectual. I’d never be a writer if I keep this up, I thought.

The thing is, focusing only on one metric — a daily word count — is not helpful and even destructive to your writing ability. Of course, some people just write really quickly, and more power to them. And certain publishers (ahem, Amazon, ahem) encourage blitzkrieg writing. But I’ve been writing professionally for about two decades and have published over fifty short stories and two novels in so-called traditional markets. And the one thing I’ve found that works better than the sole metric of word counts and speed, better than having the right writing desk or your favorite mug or your ideal writing beverage, is this:

You must create a routine.

This is so important that I’ll say it another way: without a routine, without a regular practice (and yes, writing is practice) you will not progress, you will not get better, and you will never finish anything you started.

A writer waiting for inspiration to strike before sitting down to write is no different from an aspiring professional musician waiting for inspiration to strike before she practices. A writer waiting for the “right” time to sit down to to write will never find any time to write. Decades will go by and you’ll say, “If only I’d written that thing…” I’ve seen it happen, and it makes me sad.

Sure, some days inspiration will flow like rivers. But most days you’ll be at the keyboard just doing the work. And it’s those days where that voice in the back of your head will be telling you: you must write a million words today! As fast as humanly possible! Faster, even! Get that vomit draft out, you lazy fool! Why aren’t you working harder? But then you slog along, only writing a few hundred words before you tire. You might be tempted to judge yourself for not doing enough.

Resist that temptation. Be patient with yourself. Creativity is a sly beast. Like a muscle, it tires, and ego (both the good and bad aspects of it) is the great creativity killer. If you do the work regularly (for me, it’s about twenty hours per week) you’ll make progress. Put ass in chair, and I promise you that you’ll soon see results.

You may think that since you only wrote a few hundred words, or only for an hour today, or because you didn’t finish that first draft that you’re somehow failing. But writing happens when we’re away from the page too. We might be in the shower, or going for a walk, or out with friends (for me, it’s on the treadmill at the gym) when an idea comes — a great scene or story event or poignant character choice. You have to be open and ready for these moments. Carry a paper and pen with you. Or if you’re like me, dictate the idea into your phone’s note app. (It’s fun and frustrating to see my phone try to interpret made-up proper names.) You have to understand that writing is a way of looking at the world, of seeing that your life experience is feeding your writing brain too, and that the number of words you wrote today is far less important than the quality of the experience you have conveyed through words.

Some people call this quality vs. quantity. Or writing vs. typing. I tend to resist dichotomies. The world isn’t so simple. Instead, I focus on a feeling. Do I feel as if I’ve put in the work today, that I made an effort? If so, that’s enough.

Yes, there are days when it’s a struggle to sit down and write. And on those days I force myself to just do the work. As much work as I can. Often, and to my surprise, a few days later when I go back and reread what I’ve written I find those words actually aren’t so bad. In fact, I’m often surprised at how, later, I’m unable to tell which words I wrote on my “slog” days and which words I wrote on my prolific days.

Inspiration is great, yes, but doing the work, day after day after day, can lead to great things too.

Make writing a habit and word counts won’t matter.