Curious, how productive are you?

[SciFurz]

Having read Stephen King's On Writing and a few articles on writers, I wonder how productive most writers here are.
Since I've made the choice to cut down on my job at the start of this year, I noticed the urge to write daily, and have been at it whenever I didn't feel tired from finishing a complex job, resulting in two to three thousand words in an afternoon or evening.

There's a big difference in writers; Stephen, as I mentioned before, does about three thousand a day, others as few as a hundred a day. So how much do you get down on (digital) paper?

Also, what keeps you going? For me, a couple of serious beers or red wine with the right music makes me want to write the whole night and day away.

 

[Hypoxia]

If/when the muse applies a cattle prod, I am productive.

Otherwise... well, that muse is inconsistent.

Productivity is for jobs. I quit.

 

[NotWise]

When I finally decided to start writing I went through periods in which I was writing five or six thousands words a day -- while I was at work. The quality of the writing would have made any editor earn their pay.

Since then I on occasion can do a thousand words a day, but sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. I can sometimes delete more than I write. <shrug> I'm not doing this for a living.</shrug>

For my Valentine's Day entry I average less than 300 words/day, but that included some major backtracks and revisions -- characters walked out, characters walked in, some walked in and out again. The location of one of the major events changed. There was no straight line to the end.

 

[Ewobbit]

I honestly couldn't hazard a guess on word count or even file size. I'm pretty much housebound except for frequent trips to take the real mistress of the household outside so she can search for that elusive perfect blade of grass to pee on. Other than that, I pretty much sit in front of my computer with notepad open and pecking away at a startling 10 words per minute for between 8 and 16 hours... with a whole lot of back spacing and scrolling back to rewrite a paragraph since it won't work with the direction I went off in. The overwhelming majority of which ends up languishing in a slush file for me to take a look at if I ever run out of ideas to try to write on.

When I was still working, I managed to scribble what turned out to be a 635 page novel, once it was typed, on notepads that I carried in my pocket wherever I went in just under three months.

My mind is going fuzzy so I often have trouble with just who to attribute quotes to (or even occasionally if they really are quotes), but wasn't there a celebrated author or poet that reportedly once wrote in his journal, "I had a good day writing today. I wrote a word."?

Edit; Never mind. I managed to get Google to work for something other than porn for once. It was James Joyce and he said; "I wrote three sentences."

 

[StrangeTamer]

Right now I'm doing 50-100 words on days that I write, I type slow but I'm getting better. Sometimes it will be almost 0 words added because I'm rewriting what I've already written lol.

 

[GoldenCojones]

At work, I mostly manage my team and edit what they write so I don't write as much as I used to. I have no real idea of word count per day. Most of my "work" is revision work anyway. The manuals have mostly been written and just have to be updated constantly. Only rarely do we have truly new work to do and I never do that because of the constant interruptions I face at work.

At home I write at least 1500 words a day. Most of it goes to my SF/F short stories and novels. Some times I go a week or more without writing any erotica. Sometimes I go a couple of days only writing erotica. I've only sold a couple (3) short stories and the money was basically a joke.

 

[sr71plt]

I feel as if my current e-book is going slowly. I've been writing to it for five days and just passed 14,000 words. So, 2,800 words/day. My Valentine's Day contest entry is over 19,000 words and was written in three days, so about 6,500 words/day. I'm slower on the longer pieces. In writing a single story, I can do 8,000 words in a good day and I do try to draft them in a single sitting. I try to write two stories/week or more--which is the rate I post here, but a typical story is more like 4,000-5,000 words. I'm writing e-books for the marketplace and mainstream novels too, though, at the same time. And all of this has to be reviewed and cleaned up as written, and I'm still doing some editing for others. I do try to put out at least 3,000 words/day, seven days/week.

 

[SamScribble]

How many words I write depends on what I am writing. If I’m working on non-fiction or opinion pieces, I will normally write about 3,000 finished words a day. If it’s fiction, it’s more likely to be in the region of 1500 finished words a day.

 

[sr71plt]

I can write fiction much faster than I can nonfiction. In fact, for the time that I was writing intelligence briefs, is was murder trying to stick to a 100 or 500 word ceiling while including the material given to me rather than just being able to make it up.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

It depends on the mood. Some days I have all the words in my mind and I sit down and the come pouring out. Approx. 5,000 words later, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I just quit.

Then there are the days that the words are there, but I just can't get them typed. I procrastinate all day and before I know it, I'm falling asleep.

Then there are days like to day...no words lined up in my head, total words typed...maybe 100. And when I look at them tomorrow, I'll probably change them all.

Then there are days I can pound out 10,000 words...they are few and far between, but I have done it in the past. I figure one day I will do it again. Fingers crossed.

 

[NotWise]

How many words I write depends on what I am writing. If I’m working on non-fiction or opinion pieces, I will normally write about 3,000 finished words a day. If it’s fiction, it’s more likely to be in the region of 1500 finished words a day.

If I'm writing non-fiction it's usually either policy or technical and in a legal context. It has to be sufficiently supported to stand up in negotiations, and sometimes in court, and it needs to be readable for an attorney with no technical background. Five hundred words in a 9-hour day is good and that has to wrap around the maps, tables and graphs.

I prefer fiction, but then some people say that it's all fiction anyway.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I write the same as I wrote for 20 years with the state. With the state I wrote psychological reports. judicial reviews, dispositional reports, probable cause affadavits, and investigation reports. They varied in length, from one page to 40 or more.

Anyway, I collect a head fulla facts until it all comes out in a gush of typing. I do the same with fiction writing.

 

[JKendallDane]

One of the biggest problems with coping with Bipolar Disorder is the wild manic swings. When the Muse finds me in a long-term upswing, she whispers to me constantly and the sky's the limit. When the manic low hits, though, staying focused becomes a serious problem with productivity.

I've cranked as much as 10,000+ in one day to meet a contest deadline. In 2013 and 2014, I was on a manic high for about twenty straight months and whipped out something north of a half million words between three novels encompassing 38 chapters and a half dozen one-off stories.

2015 was a clusterfuck year fighting off an ongoing manic low and getting hit with my brother dying just as I started coming out of it. I managed to only get stories done for two Lit contests, add a single chapter to a trilogy, and pop out stories for two anthologies.

I'm ready for 2016 to be another "high year" and back to pounding the keyboard daily to the tune of 2,000+ words a day.

.

 

[oggbashan]

I can be productive, for example during NaNoWriMo but Literotica and writing stories are a hobby, a diversion from my many other activities and family commitments.

Some days I can write 5,000 words and some months I write nothing but posts.

My list of stories shows that I have been productive over years.

 

[NoJo]

being manic for 20 months doesn't seem like bipolar - the energy expended usually causes a deficit pretty soon, in a matter of days or weeks - perhaps something else was the driver - I also had a had a couple of years of feverish writing, which stopped abruptly after the 3rd draft of a screenplay , and the really gruelling process of trying to get commercial interest began. Since then I've had spurts of writing lasting a week or so, punctuated by long periods of inactivity - not that I've been idle in other areas during those times.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I'm the tortoise. My whole life I look like I'll never get it done, but it always gets done, because I make every minute count.

 

[beachbum1958]

Some days I'll write mid-morning to late evening and turn out 3,000 words, the next day making marmalade or rough-shooting might seem a more productive and absorbing use of my time; I feel no particular compulsion to set myself targets, the words happen when they happen, and if they don't happen I don't go looking for them. Sometimes the muse whispers in the dead of night so I'll follow her lead, and sometimes she deserts me for days or weeks, but I don't lament her absence; writing for me is a hobby, not a calling, and I don't let it swamp my life.

 

[lovecraft68]

I binge write. I'll have days of slogging along at 1k or so at a time, then I'll go on a tear and hit 12-15k in a sitting.

My record was a 33k story start to finish on a Saturday.

 

[DwellerDark]

When I'm in the mood, I can write a good 5,000 words per day or more.

But this long bout with depression is killing pretty much everything in my life, including my writing. I don't see any light at the end, either. I just try to deal with it day by day. Some days I write, but most days I don't have the energy. That's why I've only posted 4 stories here since 2009. It sucks.

 

[oggbashan]

When I'm in the mood, I can write a good 5,000 words per day or more.

But this long bout with depression is killing pretty much everything in my life, including my writing. I don't see any light at the end, either. I just try to deal with it day by day. Some days I write, but most days I don't have the energy. That's why I've only posted 4 stories here since 2009. It sucks.

That's what depression can do to you. Lack of energy, lack of drive and not seeing light at the end of the tunnel are symptoms, not the real you.

 

[SciFurz]

Familiar feeling

When I'm in the mood, I can write a good 5,000 words per day or more.

But this long bout with depression is killing pretty much everything in my life, including my writing. I don't see any light at the end, either. I just try to deal with it day by day. Some days I write, but most days I don't have the energy. That's why I've only posted 4 stories here since 2009. It sucks.

I recognise that feeling since I have a delayed sleep pattern and have suffered from it badly in the last couple of years, causing me to almost self destruct.
I decided to stop giving a damn about money or the proper way to live and quit my job at the end of last year. Since then I've been on a roll writing (currently writing a short story for literotica that just doesn't seem to frigging end ).
I realised years ago what made me not fit into "normal" society, and regret not having started on writing and publishing on Amazon at that time.

If you can find the cause of your depression and are able to say "Screw the world!", you might just end up finding a new path in life doing the thing you're good at. Your stories do get positive scores.

 

[_Lynn_]

I write most days, but if I don't feel like writing, I don't. Some days I manage a few hundred words, other times I do a few thousand. It all depends on my mood.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

My official label is ADJUSTMENT DISORDER WITH DEPRESSION, or as I say, "When the going gets tough, the tough get depressed." But I've never felt real depression such as many people need meds for. I cant imagine depression anymore than I can imagine being pregnant. But I feel sympathy for people incapacitated by depression or broken legs or whatever tho I've never had a broken leg, either. I hadda fractured skull and many broken teeth, so I use that experience as my empathy reference point. That is, if your depression sux as much as my head injury, your situation is awful.

 

[49greg]

I actually put words on screen several times a week. On average I probably put down four to five hundred words a week. But for the last year and a half, or more, I haven't been able to finish a story. I just bounce between or an other, regardless of my intention to concentrate on just one story. I've re-written several stories more than once.

 

[_Lynn_]

I actually put words on screen several times a week. On average I probably put down four to five hundred words a week. But for the last year and a half, or more, I haven't been able to finish a story. I just bounce between or an other, regardless of my intention to concentrate on just one story. I've re-written several stories more than once.

That's what I did last year, but I was sick pretty much all year, too. There were weeks I didn't write anything. My file of unfinished stories was so full I thought about deleting some. Now that I'm better, the creativity is back and production increased. Not all ideas will become a complete story, though, so I don't spend a lot of time on those.