Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, once said, “I wrote a million words a year, much of it awful, and I was not published for years.” That amounts to 4,000 words per weekday.
When award-winning author Steven James was asked about his average writing output, he said, “About 750 good words per day.” That’s a net average, because on a given day, he might throw away 2,000 words, judged as “not good enough.” His plots and characters seem to be constantly on his mind, because you’ll often find him writing while sitting in an airport or waiting on an appointment.
Kim Messer has said, “If you wait for inspiration, you’re not a writer, but a waiter.” The best approach, it seems, is to write lots of words out of perspiration and then keep the inspiration—the parts that really “work.” By doing that, even when writing part time, we can average 250 good words a day, or one page of double-spaced text, which amounts to 62,500 words in a year.
- What percentage of your writing depends on inspiration, and how much depends on perspiration, following a discipline to keep writing, even when you don’t feel like it?
- How many words do you average each weekday?
