“An ability to generate massive wordcount is not a prerequisite for being a writer . . . The important thing is finding a way to get to a good story, preferably in the time frame in which I promised to deliver it. Not in making sure I spend a certain number of hours on the hamster wheel every day.”
That’s from Elizabeth Bear’s very thoughtful blog post today on the topic of tracking one’s word counts, and in her case, why she does it and why she doesn’t do it:
Well worth a read, IMO.
Seconded. Once you hit a decent minimum wordcount per week, it’s time to shift some of the focus from quantity back to quality.
Though, of course, what a decent minimum wordcount is per week is going to vary, possibly widely, from writer to writer. 
Going to go ahead and disagree. There’s been a strong push in recent years, a drum beat of ‘write every day’ and ‘have a word count goal’, and I’m seeing the push-back now.
The truth of it is that no, a word count is not absolutely necessary and no, you don’t need to write every day. But the problem with most people who want to write and who try to write (and quite frankly, many writers period) is that they just don’t write. They do not sit down and put words on a page, because they lack the discipline or the motivation or the time to do so. Thus, they end up writing nothing.
The push to get people to write daily and have writing goals is not to make them adhere to a strict regiment and say “this is the only way”. It’s to get authors into the habit of writing. Once they actually start doing it, then they can find a balance that works, but the hardest hurdle is that first one: actually doing it enough to have a routine.
Therefore the push-back against word goals and daily writing is enabling those who put it off to put it off. It’s countering the message of “ge tout there and write” by “eh, you don’t have to do that, you can still write, whenever”.
The thing is, Rechan, it sounds like you’re talking mostly about beginners. By the time you get past the “I want to write; what do I do?” starting-out stage and are producing and publishing work on a relatively regular basis (“regular” depending on your schedule and goals), the “You Must Write Every Day to Be a Real Writer” drumbeat becomes a one-size-fits-all annoyance at best and a disheartening/depressing perceived standard at worst. (I’ve also seen it used as a superiority contest, in that sense of “Well, how many words do you write in a week?”)
That said, even for new writers I think sometimes that advice can do more harm than good. If you have a schedule that doesn’t allow you good time to write every day, or the ability to match up to however many thousand words you’re told is required to be a pro, then there might be a feeling there of “why bother” instead of “I’ll do what I can,” and the new writer quits before she even starts and feels worse about herself to boot. Some writers do very well with the whole tough-love-type advice and the metaphorical kick in the pants; for others, that backfires badly.
Yes, if you want to finish stories and books and publish them, you’re going to have to find some way to produce the work, and you’ll have to match your production to your goals if you want to reach them. But one’s method may or may not include a regimented routine and may or may not involve daily writing. I will always, always argue that the best advice process-wise for any writer is to find what works for them, regardless of what anyone else tells them they have to do.
Well no, I don’t just mean beginners. Established writers. O mean Sean commented he was surprised so many authors relied to his 20 voices thing that they couldn’t write 6k in 3 weeks. A common complaint in the shoutbox is “I don’t have time to write”. So the pressure is “Make time, as often as you can”.
Not being able to write 6K in 3 weeks isn’t necessarily a simple productivity problem, though. Some writers just don’t work that quickly, or don’t like having to work that quickly. It doesn’t mean they’re all just not applying themselves or lack discipline to make the time. (And in this particular case, lack of time also might be a convenient way to politely turn someone down if you’re not interested in the project for whatever reason, though obviously that’s just speculation.)
I mean, yeah, I get tired of people who say “I don’t have time to write” and then spend hour after hour gaming or chatting online or watching the whole next season of whatever TV show. It’s at least more honest, and more helpful to oneself, to say “writing isn’t a top priority for me right now” and deal with it from that perspective.
I also get tired, though, of the “write for just 15 minutes a day and soon you’ll have a novel” panacea, because that doesn’t work for everyone either. If you can write a novel on your lunch break, more power to you, but I’ve learned I can’t write good prose in tiny snippets at a time. I need larger blocks of time to go deeper into the flow and mindset of the piece, preferably without interruption. So that’s another bit of common writing advice that, while it sounds very reasonable and works well for tons of people, still fails for others.
I think I’d have to agree with PT on this one. The hardest part is building up the habit. I’ve learned that in many, many different fields, once you’ve built up the habit, you can feel naked and kind of wrong when you ~don’t~ do it every day. As a beginner, we ~need~ to build up the habit, the muscle memory, and create that need not just to write (which is hopefully already there), but to set aside the time to write. We need to make the habit to learn just how much time we need to set aside and how many words a day will be enough to actually get things done in a timely fashion. We build up the muscle memory within our own psyche by doing this. Once we find the routine and scheduling that we need to accomplish our goals, once that repetition is followed through enough times, our day won’t feel complete until we actually do it. While it could be argued that it’s not that hard to jump off the bandwagon even then, well, check out my first quote in my signature. It applies here too. Far more challenging to get the ball rolling than to hop back on even once you’ve fallen off.
So for authors who already have that habit and muscle memory built in, there’s less need to put focus on word count. The need’s already there. I think a solid point you’re making here, though, is that every individual is different. There are those (such as myself, at least so far), who still need the habit. Who will just keep procrastinanting unless I say I need to get this many words down by this time. I need the structure, and the line that says ‘this is enough, you can stop pulling your hair out by the roots now’. It also gives me that small yay when I’m able to surpass it because I’ve hit my strive, and when I actually ~want~ to say, ‘just ten more minutes, I’m in a good part’. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go without it, if I’ll ever ~want~ to go without it. Everyone’s different though, and what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander.
Of course, even when I was just starting out, I never kept to a schedule or a certain word count or wrote every day. I wrote most days, yes, because I had time and I wanted to. As my schedule and commitments changed over the years, my methods have changed somewhat as well, and I’ve learned how long it generally takes me to write something so I can hit deadlines well enough – but from then to now, I’ve never had much success with quotas or schedules outside of something like a NaNoWriMo challenge (and not even that, anymore).
So, again, best for new writers to know that, yes, you do have to write, not just think about writing or talk about writing, and you have to be willing to experiment with process so you can learn what works best to help you get things done. And that might be daily habit, or it might be scheduled time once a week, or some other setup. Again, I think the backlash is because there are a lot of writers who are tired of feeling like failures or somehow lesser writers because they just don’t work the same way others do. Certainly I’ve been one of them in the past, so it tends to hit home for me.
I can empathize with this as well. I know I need the structure of goals because I know how much I tend to procrastinate and leave things for the last possible minute. It’s frustrating. For me, I found it’s best to try for short goals that I know I can obtain without completely stressing myself out. I get a natural high as I accomplish and even surpass each goal, which helps motivate me to continue on. I only really give myself one day a week to write, because time with Spirit means even more to me than writing, but I also get an idea of when I need to buckle down and really focus on writing every evening. Spirit’s learned this of me, and has been so wonerfully open to learning how and when to support me and when to tear me away from my writing so I don’t go crazy with it and stress myself out to the point of swearing off writing again.
I completely loaded my plate this year as an experiment to see just how much I can handle, and I’m already getting an idea of my own pacing and willingness to commit to certain things. I purposefully set myself up to fail, but I knew that was exactly what I was doing and with reason. By the end of this experiment, I hope to have a far better idea of how many anthos I can tackle each year, even with side projects going on, so I can truly and fully commit myself to them without setting myself up to fail.
Sorry if I’m rambling x.x Ultimately though, yes, different strokes for different folks. Habit building is a great first step, but what most people seem to forget is that while it’s a great starting point, it all comes down to finding what works for ~you~ during that time.