I reread Mek’s fascinating post on the optimal daily word count. It’s more pointed to prose writers, but relevant to poets, too.
Photo by Steve Johnson
The habits of famous writers are a source of fascination and perhaps inspiration for book lovers and aspiring writers: aesthetics of their writing retreat; curios in their space; rituals performed before sitting down to work; writing tools; and, perhaps ‘easiest’ for the aspiring writer to replicate: their daily word quota.
Should we follow Michael Crichton’s gruelling 10,000 words per day, or keep it easy breezy at Ernest Hemingway’s 500?
To answer this question, I looked at available data on 39 famous writers and drew inferences on:
– Relationship between daily word quota and rewards
– Gender influence on daily word quota and rewards
– Perceived value of effort and output, and its influence on the writer’s psyche
View original post 1,790 more words
O at the Edges 
I like this and the information that it seems to promise , however, clicking on the links seem to just loop me back to the post. Am I missing/something I should be doing?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi! The links in the original post allow you to jump to those headers…they will ‘work’ if you follow the ‘view original post’ link first and then click those links on my blog…alternatively you can just read from top to bottom 😊
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thanks!
LikeLiked by 1 person
As a poet and a prose writer, this and the link to the original post was informative! 1000-1400 words per day (on average) a sweet spot? Also interesting was the effort/reward/satisfaction discussion in the original post. Robert – thanks for sharing the information!
LikeLiked by 1 person
An informative and well assembled piece. Mek spent some time on it!
LikeLike
Sure did. I think the info about Hemingway raises some questions about prose style and total writing production. Hemingway wrote a very pared-down style. Other prose styles are comparatively verbose. I’ve also heard that he could spend all day picking just the right word. In that sense, Hemingway was a poet. Also, Hemingway didn’t write just fiction, he wrote news stories and essays. Did the word count Mek used for him include that output?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mek?
LikeLike
Sorry, guess I somehow had the impression that someone identified as Mek was involved in this post.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, Mek wrote it. I was hoping she’d chime in. Sorry for the confusion.
LikeLike
No problem! Communication is difficult with the internet between us.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And not everybody reads minds. 🙂
LikeLike
Thought waves transmitted through the internet seem to frequently suffer severe distortions. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ain’t that the truth!
LikeLike
I love that response. For a split second, I wondered if Bob was questioning who Mek was too haha.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mek who?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I ask myself all the time…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi David. Thanks for reading!
The word count figure for Hemingway I can only assume includes any and all output- it was simply 500 words/ day that I sourced from here: https://writerswrite.co.za/the-daily-word-counts-of-39-famous-authors-1/
As for the publications, I based it on a count of the number of published works listed in Hemingway’s Wikipedia bibliography entry which includes novels, non-fiction, letters, anthologies and collections. I counted a total of 41 for inclusion in my analysis, taking the liberty to exclude some collections published posthumously. As the point of the analysis was perceived effort and reward in an author’s lifetime, the ‘active years’ used to determine publications/year were from the year of first publication to either author’s death or current year at the time of writing (2016) for authors who are still kicking. Hope that answer’s your question!
From what you say about Hemingway spending all day picking the right word, perhaps then it is not surprising that his count was low. In the article where I got his word count, he is quoted as saying ‘I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refil at night from the springs that fed it.’ I guess he knew how to pace himself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks so much for re-reading Bob, considering one time around is already time consuming. I appreciate the reblog too! I loved the discussions with yourself and many others in the comments of that post.
Many months after writing on the topic, I can say I’ve discovered the fall out of an overly regimented daily word count. Over nov 2016 I stuck to approximately 1700 words per day to ‘win’ NaNoWriMo…never again!
I did got my mojo back in the last couple of days after a bit of a hiatus, just waiting for the time to type and edit what I’ve written…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I write daily, but have no set goals. Whatever happens, happens. Participating in the 30-30 challenge, as I’ve done the past two years and have committed to doing again in August, has led me to realize that a regimented production schedule is not for me. I can do it, but it drains me, and the following month isn’t very productive.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think you’re right- showing up daily is more important than the output- I think establishing the habit is a large part of letting all the rest fall into place. I don’t know how you do those daily challenges- it is one thing to do it in private but to share the output too would wreck my nerves!
LikeLiked by 1 person
For the 30-30 challenge, I follow William Stafford’s advice. To paraphrase: lower your standards. 😛
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’ve raised the bar for low standards 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha! Sometimes you just have to give up and move on. The 30-30 is good training for that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There is a good bit NOT included in the analysis … such as time spent promoting/submitting, research, editing. Analysis of hours spent writing words would be more interesting to me than this take on daily word counts. And whether writing is longhand or computerized or dictated (and how transcribed if not initially done via keyboard). While this analysis fascinates – invites questions – I don’t think I’ll start tracking daily word counts anytime soon!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think a daily word count is a commonly used barometer, hence the focus on it. Even though I enjoy statistics and “measuring” ROI and such, I can’t do it for poetry, at least not in terms of daily output. Unfortunately, I seem to spend as much time on the administrative work of poetry (submitting, correspondence, blogging, etc.) as I do on the writing of it. My stats are more likely to be based on monthly figures – number of poems completed, submissions and acceptances – which in the end doesn’t tell me much, except that I’m a tad obsessive in nature. 😬
LikeLiked by 1 person
There is so much that could have been included, but unfortunately, limited by available data. I think daily word counts rather than time spent writing is a good measure because it makes for a clearer comparison between writers. As David W Jones says in another comment here, Hemingway could spend all day picking just one word…that’d be a lot of hours compared with another author who may have the discipline to sit and write for an hour a day and allow the words to flow rather than waiting for the perfect word. Ultimately, it comes down to individual preferences, but I thought it interesting to delve into the habits of successful writers and make the correlation with word count.
LikeLiked by 1 person