How Much Should Writers Actually Write?
Whether you’re an amateur, a “prospective” professional, or a working professional (who is lucky enough not to have to work to solid deadlines), how much to write in a day, a month, or year is an eternal quandary. Of course, if you have deadlines to meet and word counts to fulfil you already have a parameter to work to (which could run from the highly reasonable to the downright enslaving), but for many, it’s a question of how much to write in order to:
A. Remain as productive as possible, while continuing to hone one’s skills.
B. Not to write so much in one sitting or over such a brief period as to tire one’s self out for further writing for the foreseeable.
Numerous authors have given different advice, and below are a brief selection, running from the ‘most intense’ to the least.
Stephen King strongly prescribes 2000 words a day as part of a daily schedule: “Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can’t expect to become a good writer.” I assume that King means for the individual to split this time evenly, meaning a baseline of two hours of writing (a thousand words per hour) against a baseline of two hours of reading. The 2000 words also essentially acts as a cap as well.
Harlan Ellison on the other hand made a target of 1000 words per night in the context of the writer having to put up with a day job, something which King doesn’t factor in. In his personal writing life, he maintained that he himself could (at least in his early pulp period) write up to 10,000 words a day.
Ernest Hemingway put a baseline of at least 500 words per day, although he was a notorious re-writer and perfectionist.
Ray Bradbury didn’t appear to speak of word counts as such, but insisted that he strove to write every single day, and claimed that while hospitalised in his eighties for a lengthy period, and away from his typewriter, he began to feel iller and despondent.
Charles Bukowski as far as I know never prescribed a word count, and unlike these authors even say that he wrote every day, instead writing just three or four out of the seven nights of the week, saying that if he wasn’t able to do that he couldn’t “act right”: “I feel sick…I get very depressed.”
What can we learn from these?
A factor that many of these writers don’t consider is the issue of re-writing and editing a work until is acceptable for submission or posting. This is an exhausting process, sometimes even more so than the original writing itself, and can on occasion take as long as the initial writing, if not longer.
Another is that not all writers work in the same medium: non-fiction writers are often restricted to no more than 1000 words per piece, if not as little as 700 or even 500. Some fiction writers also have the same problem: if a fictionist works primarily in the flash format, does that mean that he or she will have to write two short stories a day?
Those who work primarily in poetry are especially difficult: a poem can run from anywhere in length from a haiku of a dozen or however many words, to epics that could fill a book. However, most modern poems run only around 70 to 120 words, meaning that a poet would have to write twenty poems a day to meet King’s quota.
I think however I might just be able to square this circle.
I believe a “professional” writer (and treating it as a proper “day job”) should aim for at least a target of 10,000 words a week (working primarily on week days), and perhaps around 480,000 words a year, giving four weeks for time off, extra editing, and whatever else that may come up, including illnesses and emergencies. I think a “maximalist” position of every single day like King’s would be too much for most (it definitely would be for me), but if you have the stamina for it, it would be best to exploit it for maximum output. This is of course idealised; the professional writer may also have other commitments including a teaching position, touring and promotion chores, and other things necessary for both general survival and commercial success.
The ability and time to write a large amount every day is a luxury that is earned through hard work, otherwise it is a wonderful gift that must be used.
An “amateur” or early stages writer on the other hand, likely struggling with a litany of unsympathetic managers at a 9 to 5 (if they are lucky enough to have a “traditional” work schedule), should adhere to more Ellison’s advice of a thousand words a night. If a thousand words an hour is a good and achievable average, then this is enough, as long as it is balanced by at least an hour of good reading — essentially a fusion of Ellison’s and King’s prescriptions. At weekends, time should be spent on editing and re-writing, as well as the frequently tedious and petty submission process.
Poets need special advice: I would suggest at least five stanzas a day, if possible a complete poem. This will allow for time per day for editing, metre revision, checking the rhyming dictionary, and whatever else a poet needs to do. (I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek here, being a published poet myself, so don’t get up in arms.)
And as for screenwriters…well, I’m not really there yet as a writer myself, but I think both King’s and Ellison’s advice would still work for you.
At the very least, a prose writer should stay on his or her toes and produce at least five thousand words a week (preferably not all at once), regardless of circumstance.
There are other questions that have arisen, namely: at what time should one write, and in what form?
I recently came across some advice that suggested that a writer should arise early in the morning (supposedly Kurt Vonnegut woke at 5:30 am every day, as does Dean Koontz) in order to write first thing before any other work commitments. When working as a postal clerk, Bukowski followed a similar schedule: he would wake mid-morning, write and drink, then go to work from 6:30 in the evening until around 2 am.
However, many other writers — myself included — have usually preferred to get “day stuff” done, and then write in the late afternoon, or at night. I cannot actually think of the last time I wrote in the morning, or even around lunchtime. (This very post was composed entirely after 9 pm.)
I would say this is more up to the comfort and discretion of the writer: if you think it’s best to write at dawn, then do it; if you prefer the drudgeries of the day to “inspire you”, then do that. However, a professional should make it his or her business to spend the morning writing (say around from 9 until 1), really in order to spend the rest of the “working day” reading.
As to form, I think if you have the ability and opportunity to write 2000 words per day, and you are a novelist, then that should probably be your average chapter length. Working at the rates I have prescribed, you should have a complete rough draft within six to twelve weeks (unless you’re doing some kind of “epic”, in which case I’d advise you not to if it’s your first novel; remember, King’s Carrie was only about 60,000 words, and Bukowski’s Post Office was less than 50,000).
Writers with day jobs should probably aim for around three or so chapters per week, meaning you’ll have to divide the writing of them up, unless you think chapters of a 1000 words will work for your novel.
As for short story writers, Bradbury suggested that they should produce at least one short story a week, every week of the year, his reasoning being that if one writes 52 short stories a year, they can’t possibly all be bad. (He also had a neat trick to force inspiration: read one short story, one poem, and one long article a night before bed, and watch the ideas gradually flow.)
I am of course a massive hypocrite as I write this: my total average per week over the past year for everything I’ve written (fiction and non-fiction, not including poetry) has been around 1500 words, totalling around 75,000 words. Over the past eleven months of getting back into writing, I should’ve really created over 220,000 if I was writing 5000 words a week (and over 440,000 if taking it as a ‘full time’ job). I have been in hospital multiple times (and undergone a painful invasive operation) in the same period, but even then, it should be much higher.
All I can say is: you must hold yourself to a high standard, or no one else ever will.
Happy (and productive) writing!
