If a word-writer does write words, how many words does a word-writer write?
I don't know if woodchucks set daily goals for chucking wood, but it's a must for writers. The daily word output is necessary to meet the long range goal of writing the novel. It's the final specific act of writing.
After completing a list of specific goals related to plot, characters, and research it's time to write the novel. You write one word at a time, one page at a time, one chapter at a time until it's finished.
The question is how many words do you write?
The answer, It depends, should only be an option if the goal date for completion was ignored, and then, It depends can be the pat answer for all questions regarding the novel.
How many words do writers write each day? There is no magic number; however, the goal should be reachable while presenting a challenge. I know authors who have goals from 500 to 2,000 words per day. I set a minimum goal, and on days when the words come hard, I stop when I reach it; when the words flow, I leave the goal in the dust and write until my fingers bleed.
Wouldn't it be nice to eliminate schedules? Do what we want when we want? In my up-coming novel, the young protagonist wails about schedules being too confining. In reference to chores he says, "It's like the damn cows will blow up if they aren't milked exactly at six o'clock morning and night."
Obviously, schedules are necessary. Imagine being told your flight to New Orleans leaves sometime in the afternoon, or that the doctor can see you after his hospital rounds. Even knowing schedules are necessary to get done what we want to accomplish, it's easy to let them slide. Not only is production effected, but unscheduled time opens the stream of destructive behaviors.
Whatever the addiction, it welcomes unscheduled time. Hours in front of the television, mindless eating, drinking, endless Internet surfing and viewing . . . all time wasters that can become emotionally and physically unhealthy.
Perhaps Conor, the aforementioned protagonist, should be told that a caveat of no schedules is boredom.
I confess there was a time when three words threatened me more than any four- lettered words I've heard or used. The words are organization, schedule, and goal. All three are required to write a novel, or for that matter, necessary to complete any project. The key word being complete.
When I was teaching, I stopped by a colleague's room one morning before class. During our chat my eyes kept shifting to her desk. The top was covered with piles of papers, stacks of books, scraps of paper with notes, coffee cups in various stages of use, scissors, pens, pencils, and a half-eaten tuna sandwich. I couldn't determine what was in the second layer, but I visualized a nest of spiders or a cockroach colony. She stopped in the middle of our conversation to say, "I know you think my desk is a mess, but I know exactly where everything is." Seems like every one who avoids organization uses the same line.
The lady was right. Without doubt, everything she needed was somewhere in that pile on her desk. Perhaps the attendance report that she swore the office had lost. Maybe the note from the parent requesting her daughter not take the bus home because her mother was picking her up.
For the writer it could be the outline and synopsis of a new novel scratched out in the middle of the night, a contract proposal, or the napkin with the name and contact number of the lady you met at the conference who can get your manuscript in the hands of a prestigious editor.
The perfect novel is in my head. I see it and hear it night and day. It's teriffic. Believe me, I've carried it in my head a long time and it disappears off shelves faster than it can be restocked. Wow! A best seller. To be honest, there's one problem. It never hits the book stores. It stays in my head. Perhaps you don't have ADHD, or struggle with procrastination, like me, but chances are you experience the problem of getting the words out of your head in tangible form. There are 101 reasons, and more that keep those words a prisoner in the mind. Short of purchasing a bucket of butt glue I found the key and unlocked Among the Jimson Weeds and it's off and running. That's all there is to it, right? No. I still find 101 ways to delay the act of planting my butt in front of the work at hand, but I pull a few techniques out of the bag that trick my impulsive mind to work with me instead of against me. The purpose of Words Get in your Head is to share how I keep on task, and to have readers share what works for them. We need to write . . . right?
