How Many Words Should I Write In A Day?
It’s easy to get caught up with thinking you have to write thousands of words a day, but on the other hand tales abound of writers who’ll be happy with 500 words a day.
If you’re a masochist who reads my blog regularly, then you’ll know I routinely jump around on this – sometimes I’ve recommended writing a little every day and I often talk about hitting massive word counts.
It can all be confusing if you’re just looking for one number to guide you, especially if you don’t have any experience with writing consistently already. So I thought I’d give a simple answer to the question, “How many words should a wannabe writer aim for every day?”
Here’s my straight answer…
Aim to write 3,000 words a day.
If you write 3,000 words a day, you’ll have a lot of success.
There’ll be days when you don’t write at all. That’s inevitable. There will also be days where you write thousands of words. My record is not-quite 20,000 words in a day. I will break that level soon. If you think, “That’s impossible” then keep reading. I’ll get to the “how” of writing consistently later.
Averaged out, 3,000 words a day is a sweet-spot for a number of reasons. I’ll talk about those next.
Why Is 3,000 Words A Day The Best Target Word Count?
3,000 words every day is more than most writers will manage. In fact, it’s significantly more. It’s 90,000 words a month. For the fiction writers among you, that’s one novel a month. (Possibly two if you write short novels.)
It’s just over a million words a year.
Regardless of what project or projects you’re hoping to undertake, one million words is a lot of words and will complete all but the biggest of projects.
Put into perspective, that’s twice the length of The Lord Of The Rings. All of the books combined, that is. The complete Harry Potter series is just over a million words. One year.
It’s twenty websites with fifty + articles each on them.
It’s over a hundred sales letters at ten thousand words each.
In short, the first reason 3,000 is good is because it’s a lot of volume.
The reason it’s a sweet spot is because 3,000 words in a day isn’t that much work.
How To Write 3000 Words A Day
If you’re relatively proficient at typing, you can type faster than you can write. Writing fast is not a typing issue until you’re trying to hit ridiculous word counts.
Providing you can type to a decent standard, you’ve got the first element covered. The second element is knowing what you’re writing. Most people write slowly because they start writing and hope that the plot or the point will come to them.
It works for some people, but I don’t recommend it. If you write five bullet points for things you want to cover in a piece, then to create a 1,000 word article you only need 200 words per section. Planning ahead makes everything turn into manageable chunks.
The third and key factor for writing is the amount of time you commit to sitting in a chair and writing.
Those three things will get you all the way there, and 3,000 words is an easy figure to reach those targets for.
You can easily type 1,000 words per half an hour. That means you’re looking at an hour-and-a-half per day to hit the three thousand word target.
Break this down into 200 word chunks. That’s fifteen bullet points in total. Break it up into 3 x 5 if you have to.
Finally, an hour and a half isn’t much. One hour’s lunch break and fifteen minutes either side of work. Or replace evening television with typing or something. As a worst case scenario, you can skip an extra hour of sleep in all likelihood and be most of the way there – but I don’t recommend this unless you have to. Sleep is important.
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to get swept up in the idea of writing thousands of words a day. And sure, more is probably better; if you can write 5,000 words a day or 10,000 words, then by all means do it. However, there’s a difference between what you can achieve and what you need to achieve.
If you want to get objective success with your writing, then writing three thousand words a day is a good place to aim for. If you stick with the 3,000 word a day average for a few months, then you will notice an improvement and you’ll probably already find some success in terms of completed projects.