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I've Been Thinking About Word Count Lately
Apr. 1st, 2018 08:06 pmWord count, can be a wonderful and distracting statistic to use. Writers judge whether they're doing well in getting the words out as quickly as possible or judge others for prolific writing. It's difficult not to compare yourself to other writers. I've gotten passed that for the most part. The elusive 5 to 10 K day, I know is impossible for me and for the most part during the working week over 1.5K/day is.
I wrote 2,257 words today on the first day of April's Camp Nano. Since I started writing, I've come to terms with the fact I am a very slow writer, usually no more than 500 words/hour, if I'm lucky. Sprinting with my Cabin Members in thirty minutes spurts and a few times on my own throughout the day was great. The one thing that I'm trying not to do is self-edit as I go. It's difficult. I chose my words carefully and it makes me very slow. However, I refrained from self editing today, for the most part, and increased my hourly word count on average to 900. It's a break through for me but I have learned something significant about myself and my writing over the last few years.
I have a lot of trouble re-writing. Writing fast, or what I would consider fast 1.5K or more an hour, does not and will not work well for me in my process. My first drafts don't change significantly to my final drafts. I do add and re-write, but not drastically where the final draft is unrecognizable from my first go. Honestly, I don't want my final draft to read so completely different from the first draft. Tweaking, adding texture, correcting sentences structure are all things I don't have a problem doing, but complete re-writing I'm pretty much not comfortable doing at this point.
That might change in the future, and perhaps my word count will continue to increase over time. That would be lovely but I do not want to have to re-write to the point I have to throw my words away. If going slower means less words, but also less re-writing, I'm good with that.
I'm a slow writer. I sped it up today and it was fabulous. I have a lot of self editing to do on what I wrote today. It's Nano and I'm trying to get a first draft done on an 80K novel. I'm going to try to keep my OCD of self-editing to the minimum and hopefully keep up the pace for the next few months until my first draft is done.
900 Word Per Hour
Sound and feels really good to me.
Best, The Nut.
I wrote 2,257 words today on the first day of April's Camp Nano. Since I started writing, I've come to terms with the fact I am a very slow writer, usually no more than 500 words/hour, if I'm lucky. Sprinting with my Cabin Members in thirty minutes spurts and a few times on my own throughout the day was great. The one thing that I'm trying not to do is self-edit as I go. It's difficult. I chose my words carefully and it makes me very slow. However, I refrained from self editing today, for the most part, and increased my hourly word count on average to 900. It's a break through for me but I have learned something significant about myself and my writing over the last few years.
I have a lot of trouble re-writing. Writing fast, or what I would consider fast 1.5K or more an hour, does not and will not work well for me in my process. My first drafts don't change significantly to my final drafts. I do add and re-write, but not drastically where the final draft is unrecognizable from my first go. Honestly, I don't want my final draft to read so completely different from the first draft. Tweaking, adding texture, correcting sentences structure are all things I don't have a problem doing, but complete re-writing I'm pretty much not comfortable doing at this point.
That might change in the future, and perhaps my word count will continue to increase over time. That would be lovely but I do not want to have to re-write to the point I have to throw my words away. If going slower means less words, but also less re-writing, I'm good with that.
I'm a slow writer. I sped it up today and it was fabulous. I have a lot of self editing to do on what I wrote today. It's Nano and I'm trying to get a first draft done on an 80K novel. I'm going to try to keep my OCD of self-editing to the minimum and hopefully keep up the pace for the next few months until my first draft is done.
900 Word Per Hour
Sound and feels really good to me.
Best, The Nut.
