Word count or hours expended: What is the best way to keep momentum going in your writing?

There are two ways to track your writing progress and to gain a sense of momentum. Firstly you can work towards a daily word count. Whatever you decide will be sufficient though 1000 words seem to be a popular target. The second way is to put in the hours. You determine to put in two hours a day during which you will write and only write.

Both these methods have their advantages and their drawbacks. How do you decide which is the best method for you knowing you have taken everything into consideration? Given the fact that through experience you may figure this out eventually. But it will be better to make the best choice given your limited experience. And maybe seeing the advantages of the other method (or the disadvantages of your current one will make consider a change.

Advantages of tracking word count

Let's start with the advantages of the popular choice, though most of these may seem like common sense.

  1. Word count is not only highly measurable, the results can be made visible or physical. With writing that produces very intangible results (how do you measure 'coming up with ideas'?) anything that can be seen creates a positive feedback loop. If you do a 1000 words today they are still there when you start tomorrow. You can easily plot your progress on a graph or only keep track of the word count in the task bar. I can for instance see that for this article I am now at 270 words and that translates easily into progress.
  2. Word count ads up. If you write one page a day (depending on your system between 250 and 350 words) you will write the equivalent of a book in less than one year. In essence this is a what tracking word count amounts to. It makes the writing of a book, if you keep it up, inevitable.
  3. Word count gives you a daily target and therefore knock of point. Because you can write almost anywhere and all the time and especially if you feel any pressure the tendency is to do just that, to try and write all the time. But if you have met your quota for the day it is much easier to pack it in and know you have done the job (for today). Then you can leave the writing and spend some time living, or at least doing the laundry.
  4. Word count makes planning to write your book manageable. If you are writing a book you plan to be 100 000 words long and you write a 1000 words a day you can figure out that is will take you 100 days to write a first draft. If you write 5 days a week that is 20 weeks or roughly 4 months. This way you can see if your deadline is achievable and adjust accordingly. If you write faster or slower for any reason you can either move the target day or adjust your daily word count target.
  5. Word count gives you a method to trick your critical mind (editor) out of the power seat. You give your editor something tangible to track (a number) and you can happily motor along letting your creative side loose to just spin the words.

These advantages are enough to convince most writers that writing with a specific daily word count is the best way to go. But let's look at the advantages of putting in the hours.

Advantages of putting in hours

It may seem as if will be repeating myself when I list the advantages of putting in the hours. I do think there is a significant difference though but we will only get to that when we start looking at disadvantages.

  1. Hours expended is also highly measurable and easy to make visible. A wall calender with a tick for every hour spend writing will easily prove the point. Again this creates a positive feedback loop and if you put in the hours one day you can put it in the next.
  2. Working on a minimum number of hours a day, especially if you do it every day at the same time, creates a habit. A habit ensures that certain actions become automatic and if you do it long enough and regular enough it will become engrained in your daily expectation and you will feel a sense of loss if you skip a day.
  3. Working on hours give you an easy way to plan your day. Especially if you have to fit writing into an already busy schedule it is easier if you have to schedule a certain time to write. Some part time pros do this by writing early in the morning, others take a lunch hour or from 11 to 12 at night.
  4. Working on hours also makes it easier for you to quit. If you have done your hour of writing for the day you can carry on with other responsibilities with a clear conscience. But you can also dedicate yourself to your writing with a clear conscience. During your scheduled time you can push other thoughts aside because you are only going to do this for one hour and then you are back. This is great if you live with other people and they want to know when you are going to available.
  5. Writing for a minimum time also gives you the ability to strong arm your critical self into submission. If you sit with a piece of paper or a keyboard and you do not allow yourself to do anything else you will start writing even if you have no inspiration whatsoever. This is because your inner critic hates to be bored. It will grudgingly praise you for not being a slacker and temporarily forget to comment on the quality of your writing.

Daily writing, whichever way you do it, get momentum going in your writing. An writing is better than not writing any day. Depending on your requirements you can choose the best method to fit your personality and circumstances. But before you do let's look at a couple of disadvantages first.

Disadvantages of tracking word count

There may be more of course but here are a couple I have come across in my own writing.

  1. Firstly, and everybody seem to gloss over this, quantity does not mean quality. If King or Pullman writes 1000 words a day and I write 1000 words a day that does not mean I am just as good a writer as King or Pullman. In fact, it is much easier to write a lot of bad stuff than what it is to write a little bit of good stuff. Deciding on a certain quality level is therefore essential in in tracking word count. And I mean more than just writing in some intelligible language. Clearly at some point it is better to write less and write better.
  2. If keeping a daily count would lead to inevitable books there would be more books written and published. This is by published and unpublished authors. A thousand words a day would give writer three books a year. Over a career of 20 years that would amount to 60 books. Yet there are very few 20 year pros with that many published titles. The reality is that it is not just the words you write but what they amount to and they need to amount to something publishable.
  3. Once you strike a speed wobble on word count it is difficult to recover. Especially if you have a deadline looming and you had a couple of days of less than stellar production. Missing your word count only a couple of times a month will quickly add up to make a project go from daunting to impossible. What seems like an easy target in week one becomes a nightmare in week 10 when you now need to produce 7653 words a day to stay on target. You need to be sensitive to your weaknesses and adaptable in your scheduling.
  4. Requiring a daily word count do not take into account creative cycles or the different demands of a writing project. How do you measure word count when you have to cut 10 000 words from an overly long draft. Or how do you do it if you have to write a 100 word proposal and you just can't get it right. You may also be taking a dip in creative energy that would make you wish you can just type the same word over and over again (and the word you want to type is a profanity).
  5. A word count can also kill your creativity. At school you were required to write only a 350 word essay. And most of these were terrible because a focus on the word count made you lose the essence of why you were writing in the first place, to communicate something. If you had something to communicate and focussed on that the words would have flowed much easier.

Disadvantages of putting in hours

  1. You can stare at a page for two hours and write two words. You can mentally fall asleep and kid yourself that you are writing but if you are not producing words you may not be making any progress at all. Even though you may be feeling like a writer you will largely be kidding yourself.
  2. Because you have the time and you are here anyway you can easily be sucked into getting things perfect. You can spend two hours easily moving punctuation around to improve the flow of a piece of writing rather than writing more. While you will be writing you will not necessarily be writing towards the completion of a book. This is why many first novels tend to be finished in ten years or more. And a sequel seems to be almost impossible. You mean you have to do that again?
  3. Just putting in hours does not take into account your creative cycles. It makes you lose sight that some of your best writing may be done while you are staring out of the window or doodling during a boring meeting. Just typing should not be confused with writing.
  4. Requiring a pound of flesh when you really have done enough already and would benefit more from a break is also not a good thing. Your concentration will vary over a period of time and breaking it up into shorter or variable units might improve production and quality. Sticking it out because you have to do the time can make your writing just as rigid.
  5. You can write 2 hours a day for the rest of your life but if it is not meshed with a plan that tallies the word count it will never amount to a book. Even though the quality of your writing may be incredible.

It seems as if the question turns towards a balance between quantity and quality. While a daily word count encourages you to produce more a minimum time spent writing gives you an opportunity to make it good (without the pressure of churning out more).

The most logical daily requirement you should set for yourself would be a combination of word count and hours, balanced with the requirements of your project and your natural creative rhythms. Which brings us back to the point that you can only really know what works for you through the experience of trying all possible methods and tracking your successes and failures.

I have had quite a bit of success of working towards a word count if I have a clear project to work on. But I have doubts about my quality level. I think I can benefit from a daily goal that would ask me for between 500 and 1000 words and at least one hour of work. In other words, once I get to 1000 words and the time is not up I go back and improve what I have written rather than just rack up more words.

Personally I am still feeling my way through this and building onto my experience.

Gerhi Janse van Vuuren