For a good portion of my writing life, I was flailing around without having much of a clue as to how well or how efficiently I was writing. In my head, it’s probably one of the reasons why I spent several years not writing anything and wondering why I didn’t feel like I was much of a writer even though I spent well over a decade writing as a journalist and taught writing, on and off, for nearly as much time1. Eventually, as all of the self-help books and advice would lay out, I began to think setting some manner of goals would help me be productive as a writer.
My intent in sharing my experience with writing and data is not to give you, the reader, a foolproof system of being a prolific writer. If any writing teacher or coach should tell you, a lifetime is not enough time to learn everything there is to know about writing. Goodness knows there is plenty I don’t know, especially about promotion and reaching an audience. However, there are some things that have worked for me, so I decided to share them for this edition of Prose Night.
Starting Out
Years back, far earlier in time than I want to recount here, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), well before the current unpleasantness regarding inappropriate behavior between (I’m trying to recall) volunteers for the organization and underage participants.
Regardless, even though I only completed the monthly novel writing challenge once, it was a great influence on my thinking. Part of it was a matter of math. I knew if an author managed to write 1,667 words per day, they would be able to create a 50,000 page manuscript by the end of the 30-day period of November when NaNoWriMo took place.
After a while, I began to wonder if there was a more sustainable pace I could maintain over time. 1,667 words a day is a bit of a haul, especially when you’re someone like me who has a day job and maybe even kids to help look after. Eventually, I decided to set a quota of 500 words a day. It was less than a third of the pace of NaNoWriMo, but it was a pace I thought I could possibly sustain day in and day out. That’s where it began.
Refining the System
Refining the System
Over the course of a couple years, I began to refine how I kept track of what I wrote. I started out just writing down how many words I wrote down every day. I started to put those notes in one place.
Eventually, I got the idea that I had to count the amount of time I spent revising my work and planning what I was going to write, because that was writing as well even though it didn’t necessarily produce large quantities of words. After some consultations with fellow writers in the writing groups I frequented, I came to the conclusion that 30 minutes of revising and planning would be worth as much as 500 words in a day. Those became my minimum quotas for work every day, around about 2017, and I’ve stuck to them ever since.
By late 2017, I was starting to keep track of the numbers on a week to week and month to month basis. I recorded how much work I did each day, week, month, and eventually year. Eventually, you tend to start recognizing patterns, highs and lulls in your productivity, things you can work on. If you’ve had three weeks in a row where you haven’t written much of anything, that’s about the time to pick things up again.
By 2021, I had gathered enough data on what I’d written over the past few years to confidently predict I could write 200,000 words based on my past productivity. So the next year, I shot for 200,000 words and not only made it, but set new yearly records in 2022 and 2023. Nowadays, 200,000 words is the minimum amount of words I am expecting to write. Hopefully, it will be a lot more.
Summing Up
Again, I do not seek to say I’ve solved writing by any means. However, I have learned keeping track of these statistics can be an effective way to measure what I do and show what I might be capable of.
My advice is simple:
- Set clear, measurable goals for what you plan to write. These can be any level or amount of writing you feel best fits your capabilities and work habits. However, they have to be things you can put a number and a time limit to.
- Keep a record of what you write and when you write it. I also recommend you keep track of how often you meet the goals you set. If you are having trouble meeting those goals, it’s likely something will need to be adjusted.
- Review the data you record. Are you having trouble getting writing done on the weekends, or during a certain time of the year? After your review, think about it and see if you need to make changes to things like when or where you write, or whether you need to alter your working habits.
- Finally, if the data is showing you’re doing something well and productive, keep doing it.
Happy writing.
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- Since I’ve converted to special education teaching, I wouldn’t consider myself to be a writing teacher, even though I do technically help students with their writing as part of their individual education plans (IEPs). What I do there is more specialized and aimed at basic skills rather than the type of teaching you might get in a composition course or writers’ workshop. ↩︎
