Words Per Day and the First Million Words

New Year is traditionally associated with setting goals and making resolutions. But in a writers group I participate in one of the other writers recently stated they had written 100,000 words last month. This caused some consternation amongst others who compared themselves negatively to it and some even felt this stated achievement was perhaps inflated. But it made me think first, how many words per month is reasonable? According to his book ‘On Writing’, Stephen King writes 2000 words per workday. Per his Reddit posts, Brandon Sanderson averages 2500 words per day, but that’s edited words, not first draft. We’ve all done this kind of google search to see what it ‘takes’. But it creates monthly totals not completely unlike my writers group colleague – their 100,000 words in a month averaged out to 3300 words per day if working all 30 days so, while a lot, it’s not completely unbelievable if writing is your only preoccupation (I’m assuming no kids, no fulltime job). In any event, it got me thinking – how much do I do in a month? Given it varies so much month to month I counted up finished pieces wordcounts over the last year.

Total words of finished short fiction over last year = 94,778 words

So averaging only 7898 words per month. Not only am I nowhere near the 3300 of my writers group colleague, I don’t even match Stephen King’s impressive but more modest daily average!

Given the other demands on my time I still think my total is decent. However, there is popular wisdom (myth?) that the first 1 million words you write as a writer don’t count; you only begin to be a decent author after that. Who originally claimed it, and on what basis is unclear but it’s been variously ascribed to Ray Bradbury, Jerry Pournelle, John D. McDonald and Neil Gaiman, amongst many others. But if the adage is true it would make my annual wordcount seem not only small, but predict a long decade of work ahead of me before any of my words even start to count.

Now I may be being a little unfair to myself – I suspect that the aforementioned 100,000 in a month was rough draft. I could boost my words a little if I counted words in draft form as drafts are usually longer. A lot gets changed, added and subtracted in editing, so my total words are no doubt higher. However, as I never set out to count, I don’t have that data. All I have is my finished words.

I could also boost my count if I included non-fiction pieces. Or if I included unfinished short fiction pieces, as there are many stories I take 10, 20 or sometimes 90% of the way, and then abandon as they are not working. Or if I included this blog. But I would still be nowhere near 100,000 a month. I suspect it would take it up to 100,000 to 120,000 for the year.

And, honestly, I’m fine with that. Though I believe in settinng goals, at the end of the day I don’t like word count as a metric much for myself, as it doesn’t necessrily inform anything about whether I am happy with the work. For that reason finalized words probably works better for me than draft words as those are at least pieces I felt worth finishing. But for me, even that metric I don’t want to worry about too much as right now, while I spend a lot of my time on writing, I don’t think I could do much more. Not only that but right now I enjoy writing. I would be concerned in losing that joy in the process if I was so focused on a number rather than looking at what I have achieved and being able to be proud of it.

And as to the 1 million words? I don’t buy into a fixed number of words for everyone, any more than I believe the 10,000 hours idea that Malcolm Gladwell popularized. Even the original scientists who worked on the 10,000 hours idea say that the pop-version is a misunderstanding of their research. So for myself, I will continue to focus on enjoying writing and producing things that I like. I am not going to worry about what others do, or any mythical targets I must make. The rest can take care of itself. At the end of the day, I do not know if any of the things I write will get published, so my main focus has to be on are they things I like, things I am glad I have produced.

And I hope you too create your own goals, and not worry about how many words other people are producing or how near or far you are from mythical landmarks like 1 million words. Unless such goals are meaningful and useful to you. But let me know your feelings on goals, words counts, and the million word target in the comments below!