A common discussion that comes up among writers is: “How much do you write?” The answer is usually along the lines of “Oh, 3,000 or so words a day.” Is that a bad thing? Well, maybe.
Ever since I started writing I’ve had other authors give me the same advice – Writers, write! You have to put butt in chair and get words onto the page or you’re not a writer, you’re just some guy who wants to be a writer. Now, I agree with that 100% but I always had an issue with the concept of setting word count goals. Having a set minimum seems to mess with my creative process. It turns the joy of writing into a freshman English exam for me. When I try to hit word counts, I spend all my time looking at the counter on the bottom of my Word screen, thinking: “Ok, that’s 100 words . . . now do another hundred!” The very fact of counting completely pulls me out of my writing headspace, so I never do it.
How then do I write a reasonable amount? I simply write scenes. I know what has to happen in the next scene for my characters and I simply write that, from start to finish, and when the scene is done so am I. No stress, no worries about words. I’ve move the story forward by one needed section and I’m good for the day. Here’s the good news – once I started doing that, I found that my production went through the roof. I find that scenes tend to go longer than the standard 3K word count and when you’re in the emotion of one (not distracted by counting!) the words come faster and you’re much more productive. I find that my writing sessions tend to run 5,000 to 8,000 words now . . . not that I’m counting! :-)
With my novel “The Screaming God” most scenes took half of a chapter, i.e. all I had to do was write 40 scenes and I was done!
