Hi Guys and thank you so much for answering my query regarding what happens now topic it was really informative. Now my first ms is out to the publishers, my agent who is just awesome has told me to start the next one which I have duly done. I know exactly the story, charaters etc and am really excited about it. However, I feel just exhauseted and only managing to write 1,300 words a day. I feel I have just been writing solidly for the past twelve months. I had to write one radio drama and two tv dramas for the BBC and then I wrote my ms and now I have to start the next one all in less than twelve months. As much as I am enjoying it, I feel I have run a marathon and it's just seems harder. Like I say not the ideas, plots etc, I just feel slower. Is this normal? and how many words a day do you aim for? Also, how many novels are you expected to write each year once published? Maybe it's just me and I've just got a big old lazy bone running through my body. Any input would be great, thanks once again

Many writers would think that 1300 a day is a lot. I push myself to do 2200 first-draft in a 4-hour stint, but that's very rough first draft, which will need a lot of work still - bare word counts don't tell you a lot because it so depends how finished those words are. The most poetry Yeats ever wrote in a day was six words.

There is only so much GOOD writing one can do per day, I think - whatever your limit is. On one hand, you do often have to push past the anti-writing demon. On the other hand, if you push yourself too hard for too long - months and months - the law of diminishing returns sets it: you revert to your least demanding defaults, off-the-peg ideas and tried-and-trusted tricks, and find yourself writing 'that'll do' stuff, instead of the best you're capable of.

At the commercial end of the book trade, there's huge pressure to produce a book a year. Less so at the literary end - I wouldn't sign up to less than a two-year deadline, because I simply couldn't do it. I also know that I need some time between books, exactly to re-stock my writing self with new stuff which challenges those lowest-common-denominator defaults.

I do wonder perhaps that more writers ought to look their publisher in the eye and say, 'Okay, do you want a crap book in a year, or a good book in eighteen months?' It's the kind of fight that you want your agent's backing for, though: part of their job is to be the interface between your writerly self, and the book trade. I would say, if you'll soon be negotiating a contract, now's the time to think about this and not be too meek in the face of being asked for a deadline you fear you won't be able to meet. Publishers have got much sharper about deadlines because the recession has made them keener to wriggle out of some contracts they're regretting...

Emma

I had to write one radio drama and two tv dramas for the BBC and then I wrote my ms and now I have to start the next one all in less than twelve months.

Flowersonmyhead, are you for real?

Just don't burn yourself out. That is a lot of writng, and 1300 words a day is a lot - I don't manage that, though I wish I did!

500 words a day will get it written in around 6 months.

Flowersonmyhead, are you for real?

Yes... going by your profile, you're only 20, so it seems like you're experiencing an awful lot of success early on. If this is genuine (sorry to be cynical, but...) then all I can say is I think you should cut yourself some slack!

Gosh, I wish I was twenty! My profile should say 1970!!!! Yes it's all for real. Originally I wrote a radio play which was shortlisted for an award and from that I was asked to write a ninety minute drama on an exclusive first refusal and then they weren't quite sure about it due to the setting, money etc, so then they asked me to expand the radio play into a drama, which I did and now it's at stage three, awaiting a green light but that could be months down the line. I felt really restricted writing dialogue and wanted to be able to explore more and then someone suggested I should write a novel, which I did and as they say, the rest is history! So i assure you that I am not a delusional crack pot, well I hope not anyway. It was all about taking the oppurtunity and not taking a back seat. So I wouldn't have usually chosen to just write and write but it was just the way it happened. I am pleased that 1,300 is an acceptable writing amount because that does include me editing it and really making it tight, I prefer to work like that so when I come to the doing the second draft it isn't a mess, otherwise that lazy old bone strikes and I won't do a thing on it. So question guys, do people really pretend to be a hard working writer (!) when really they are just daydreaming their life away.

1,300 words is a brilliant average to maintain. I managed 1,000 or so per day on my first novel, and much, much fewer on this, my current book.

And congratulations on all the success. Enjoy it!

1,300 a day is an astounding workrate, I think. Very impressed! Your publisher won't want more than a book a year. I reckon if I can write 15k a month (say, 3-4k a week - i.e. much slower than you!) then I can finish a novel in about eight months. That leaves time for editing and hopefully to take a break before beginning on the next book.

Not that it has ever worked out that way yet for me (the 3-4 month break), because I've had manuscripts rejected (which doesn't seem to happen to other writers at quite the same rate as it does to me, and I'm sure won't happen to you). But I have kept up that rate of writing (or higher, at times, when I'm less busy at work, or rushing towards an end) for the five years now since I began, and I think it's workable as a regular thing even without breaks.

Good luck with the new WIP!

Rosy x

Ah right - thought that was a bit strange! Well then, all I can say is that I agree with the others, 1,300 words is quite good enough as a daily rate. I wouldn't feel too bad about spending the odd day daydreaming, we all do it... think of it as creative fuel.

Okay, well I'm going to give a slightly different view. 1300 words per day is not actually very much. If you can write four pages an hour, this equates to about one and a quarter hour's work. Which, if you're setting up to be a professional, and to write for a living, is really hardly enough to get you warmed up. Professional writers, certainly the more commercially-geared kind, aim for more like 5,000 words per day. Other writers will give all sorts of reasons why they can't possibly produce anywhere near this amount. They'll talk about how you can't force quality; how there's no point in writing if it's just going to be crap, etc. Which may have a point in it somewhere. But I'd say that any kind of writer - commercial, literary, children's, whatever - benefits from writing more rather than less. More gets the writing muscles working automatically so that when you sit down to write, the story can pour out of your fingers. And if you get exhausted, just doing a couple of hours a day at what it is you say you love to do, it may be time to find another interest.

The difficult, curious and perhaps counter-intuitive question a lot of writers perhaps need to face, but often don't, is why it is they use so little of their free time in actually writing. For example, if some regular posters on WW added it up, they might find they're writing a few thousand words a day for this site. Imagine if that was turned into writing writing instead. And yes, I'm skidding about on the thin ice of hypocrisy here, since I've just posted 300-odd words here that could have been the opening to a crime story I should be writing!

So, I'd argue that writing is no different to any other skill: the more you do, the better you get at it.

Terry

If you can write four pages an hour

!!!!!

When I am absolutely concentrating, and it's flowing well, I might write one page of novel in an hour. Say, 400 words. With non-fiction, maybe half a page, or even just a paragraph, or less. It can sometimes take me an hour to get one footnote right.

You must be a phenomenon of nature, Terry!

Rosy x

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This makes me think... it's so hard to imagine, isn't it, what the process of writing actually involves for other people? I usually arrange and rearrange the words of every sentence about five times before I'm happy with it. Then after three or four sentences I go back and read them together and make readjustments again, because read together they have a different feel from the way they do when read separately. But then, I don't do a 'quick first draft' - with most of my novels, what went to the printers was (with some cuts or insertions or both, following editorial advice) the original draft. I never edit (and neither has my agent or editor ever edited) the actual writing.

Which is probably why this sort of 'show me yours and I'll show you mine' discussion may be rather futile, or even undermining. We all work differently, and I suspect there's no need for anyone to feel underendowed because someone else has a higher daily word count.

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Though yours sounds really big, Terry!

I follow Louise Doughty's blog and she's often moaning about not being able to get down to writing - she has to earn a living and there's the family to take care of. Part way through her last novel she took 3 months off from writing for various things like judging the Man Booker prize.
The most I've managed in a day was 4000, and that was one stint of 2500 words in the morning and 1500 words in the evening. I was so mentally and physically exhausted I didn't write anything for the next 3 days.
A number of authors set aside the morning to write, and do other things in the afternoon to recharge their batteries. Some have a set word count - 2000 - to reach before they stop for the day, and might finish that in a morning or it might take all day.
Really don't beat yourself up about it, but probably a good idea to set aside some time in every day to write, and if oyu find oyurself staring at a blank sheet of paper then get on with some editing.

it's so hard to imagine, isn't it, what the process of writing actually involves for other people?

It's so true - which is why there's no one answer, only a whole lot of ideas to try, to see which resonate with you.

Obviously, functional craft writing, once you're experienced, goes a lot faster than spinning a big novel out of nowhere: I can do a blog post or write a lecture much quicker than I can write a novel.

I did have a very interesting revelation, that having for years done 1300 words per session, I could just ask 2200 of myself, and it happened...

In a perfect world, I'd do two of those sessions a day. Unfortunately, there's the stuff that keeps the domestic economy (sort of) solvent between big novel contracts: teaching, manuscript reviews, other bits of freelance writing, keeping the blog and the website up to date, and that takes writing time and brain too. (and after that there's all the rest of life.)

One question which makes a difference, I think, is how much the writing down is part of the thinking out, or more about recording what you've already thought out. When I know exactly what needs to happen in a scene, and voices, characters, settings and themes are already established, then it can go very fast. One of the things I was rather fancying about my idea of spinning a series off A Twist of Gold, was that it would be craft writing rather than literary writing, if you see what I mean.

Emma

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Oh, and don't get me started on how being a performing author screws up the timetable...

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Thinking about it, I'll be interested to see how the next novel goes. On one hand, touch wood and not counting chickens and all, it'll be under contract and so to a deadline. On the other, I won't be simultaneously trying to do a PhD, as I have been with this one...

I think writing fiction is quite intensive work and, as Naomi suggests, it is mentally tiring. However much we enjoy it, there is only so much we can effectively do in one day. It's not like most types of work, where 8 hours with some breaks is a reasonable ask.

When I was doing NaNo, I found 2500 was an average day, 500-800 was a pulling teeth day, and, when I was desperate for word count, I managed a max of about 4500 in a day, but all these word counts were when writing in the NaNo mindset of quantity over quality - of 'keep going even if it's rubbish'. Most of it wasn't rubbish, fortunately, but I certainly didn't let it stop me when it was (normally I would have pulled back and had a rethink or rewrite as appropriate).

As for under usual first draft conditions, I find a good day is 2500, and an average day is 1000, maybe. A poor day is 400. Although I wrote nearly every day during NaNo, I don't usually manage to write every day because of other commitments, so this doesn't mean I write 1000 per day.

In the end, floweronmyhead, I think everyone is different and you have to make up your mind what works for you. It depends on all kinds of things, such as how rough your first drafts are, or how polished, and what kind of fiction you're writing. It's reasonable to assume that literary writing would progress at a slower rate than than popularist fiction, I would have thought.

Finally, congratulations on being shortlisted for the radio play award, which is great, and obviously got you interest from an agent and from the BBC, who wanted to see what your tv script writing would be like. But it sounds as if you haven't got any of these accepted for publication/screening yet, so although you've got interest and momentum, which is fantastic, don't count your chickens too soon!

I also think that writing prose fiction is quite a different skill from scriptwriting, so bear that in mind.

I wish you all the best of luck, and hope all your dreams come true!

Deb