How many words do you usually write in a day?

[Sultry23]

I know some of you are quite prolific, but even if your not feel free to answer!

 

[alohadave]

A couple hundred words if I'm feeling into it. But I don't write every day.

 

[Demiurging]

I try to put at least 500 into each of my running projects, and I feel slow.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

It varies depending on inspiration. Some days its thousands, others, I barely write at all.
I wrote Consider Yourself Served in just a few hours, start to finish, and it's almost 5K words.
the past few days, I've been fine tuning the ending of a story and I probably haven't written a hundred words a day.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Not including reviewing and making changes, I can probably write about 1k words in an hour it it's flowing (big if). Four hours or so is a good session for me so 4k in a day is about the limit. But sometimes I get way less than that and have to grind out a story over weeks.

 

[dadadadiox]

Too many words, and most never see the light of day.

 

[Deleted member 6736302]

I’ve been re-editing a couple of chapters today for publication here, so total word count for the day is 8500 ish, ahead of running through everything through my custom chatGPT to help with grammar issues. That’ll probably end up less, to around 8300 or thereabouts. This is an exceptional day, I felt like writing today.

For my history books and the doctorate I have to write about 1000-2000 words a day, every day. Even if I don’t feel like it!

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Just a note, Hemmingway only wrote about 500 words a day, but damn, they were good words.

 

[StillStunned]

Outside my day job, I range from none at all to 4000 between dinner and bedtime.

I'm beginning to think my writing runs on solar power. It seems to have ground to a halt this winter.

 

[KeithD]

I try for 1,500 a day and am satisfied with 1,000 (or none if there's something else I wanted to do rather than write). I can do 5,000 on a clear day. I do about half a million words/year for publishing.

 

[Deleted member 6736302]

Just a note, Hemmingway only wrote about 500 words a day, but damn, they were good words.

This is such a good point. I tend to cut about half of whatever I write.

 

[PeytonMirabelle]

Incredibly variable, based on motivation and time. Some days I struggle to scratch out five hundred words. About fifteen hundred is the mean, averaging twenty-ish writing days a month.

One day--just once--I topped 11K words in ten hours. I'll probably never get there again.

 

[CalebZhass]

I know some of you are quite prolific, but even if your not feel free to answer!

Depends on the subject. Trolling on the forums? Probably a few hundred (per hour)
Stories.. bah, never really counted. Today I'm up by like a 1k so far, or about 2k over the last two days, but then I spent most of my free time writing and didn't write a word for like a week or so before.

When I get into the mood and get the inspiration, its about 50-150 per hour. On average though, I think its less than 50 per day. Likely way less.

 

[KeithD]

This is such a good point. I tend to cut about half of whatever I write.

I very rarely cut anything out of my initial drafts. Subsequent reviews usually add words rather than subtract them. Only in my 750-word stories do I wind up cutting. I usually have about 825 words in the draft and cut down to 750 from there.

 

[Deleted member 6736302]

I very rarely cut anything out of my initial drafts. Subsequent reviews usually add words rather than subtract them. Only in my 750-word stories do I wind up cutting. I usually have about 825 words in the draft and cut down to 750 from there.

Whatever works for you I tend to think there’s no right answer in writing.

You sound meticulous which is a great trait to have and I am envious of.

I’m definitely in the “stream of consciousness” sphere of things, writing wise.

 

[KeithD]

I’m definitely in the “stream of consciousness” sphere of things, writing wise.

Me too. I turn the world off and become the story as I'm writing. That's the enjoyment I get out of writing. It isn't agonizing; it's an arousing flow.

 

[lovecraft68]

I used to binge write, could do an easy 2-3k on a work night and weekends could get up to 10k in a day. The last two years I'm down to mostly writing on just the weekends and now I'm lucky to get 2k done over the weekend. Real life has taken a toll the last year +

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Any day where I get over 1000 I consider a good day. If all that I can scrape up is 400 or 500 I'll take it. I can spike up to 2500 on rare occasions. I really don't know what my record is but I'm sure that I must have hit 4000 or 5000 a couple of times.

I will say that although these numbers feel slow to me I always have to remember that my plotting drafting and editing is all rolled into one process, so once that I'm 'done' my final editing and proofing phase can be quite short.

You can hear stories about novelists who write 80k in six months and then spend another six months editing and revising. I wrote a 55k novel once in 18 months (while working full time job) and spent just three weeks with final edits and proofs (and I am meticulous).

 

[KeithD]

You can hear stories about novelists who write 80k in six months and then spend another six months editing and revising. I wrote a 55k novel once in 18 months (while working full time job) and spent just three weeks with final edits and proofs (and I am meticulous).

Professional novelists have to add in time for both adoption of the next finished manuscript and promotion of the last published book.

I heard John Grisham discuss this. At any one time, a full-time novelist is researching a book, writing a manuscript, revising a manuscript, pinning down a publisher, revising the publisher's edit, and doing signings and promotions of the latest published book.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Somewhere between zero and 10,000...

I try and do a couple sentences a day, but currently I'm just not feeling it. Too much work and life admin currently to write for fun, I reckon.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I heard John Grisham discuss this. At any one time, a full-time novelist is researching a book, writing a manuscript, revising a manuscript, pinning down a publisher, revising the publisher's edit, and doing signings and promotions of the latest published book.

Oh yes, I can only imagine. I don't doubt that at all.

 

[luv2custrip]

I rarely look at word count. I can crank out a 2-3 page on Lit view story in 7-10 days.

 

[MyBareTorso]

It varies too much to really say, and really depends on my other commitments. Some days can be zero, others up to 3000 words... I'd love to do Literotica writing every day, but other stuff frequently gets in the way!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I rarely look at word count. I can crank out a 2-3 page on Lit view story in 7-10 days.

That's roughly 11k words so divided by 2 is 5500 per day, or by 3 is 3700 per day. Either way one of the highest counts in this thread.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I figured out once that I've averaged 120,000 published words a year for close on nine years, so that works out about 2100 a week, thereabouts.

My fastest ever story was 8000 in a total time of about 14 hours, over four days. It's possibly the best thing I've written.