Logging writing sessions

[TheNightTerror]

I just thought I'd share a little writing habit of mine, don't mind me. :)

Quite a while ago now, over a year anyway, I decided to try something a little different when I was writing. I always thought I wrote fairly fast, but I never really bothered to find out just how fast I went. When I started a new story, I started leaving little notes when I started and stopped writing. I'd simply write as normal, then when I called it quits for the day, I'd type 'stopped writing here', and leave it at that. If I was delayed or distracted for some reason, I'd mention it in the note.

It's actually gotten pretty handy for me. Once I finished the story, I had quite a bit of data to play with. I could see how much I normally wrote in a day, for example. According to the word count from Word, my average was 5,088 words a day, that story in particular was done in 21 nights and ended up being 106,848 words all together, although I've read that Word's word count isn't always accurate. ;) It was in the 234 pages long, though.

Another thing, I could simply look at the data and see, 'hey, something isn't right here. I was writing close to 7,000 words a day, then I wrote only 2,000 on day 14.' That's usually a red alert that I was writing something I didn't find interesting, and if I was bored, the part might not be worth keeping. If I went crazy and I wrote something like 10,000+ words a day, odds are the only thing I need to worry about when I read that day's work is looking for typos, because I was definitely into what I was doing.

Now that I've got some data on how much I normally write, I'm thinking of setting up a little reward system for myself. For example, if I, say, go over 7,500 words in one day, maybe I'll let myself have a 'special' hot chocolate, (Bailey's and hot chocolate, who needs heaven?) or I'll let myself play a computer game for a little bit. Something that I'll have fun doing, but won't interfere too much with writing the next day. Or, if I go a considerable amount under my average, I'll make myself start writing earlier in the night to make up for it.

Just curious, does anyone else do anything similar to this? :)

[E.G. Gammon]

I have a system, but it's not nearly as detailed as yours. When I decided to convert my planned-network-soap opera into a novel series, I began dating everything I wrote, no matter how small it was. I have a whole series of papers with dates on them going back to last Thanksgiving. And as far as word count goes, I write for the day, print it out, punch 3 holes in it, and put it in a binder with a stick-on tab marked with the date I wrote what I wrote and the approx. word count of the writing. That's about as detailed as I go...

[Jamesaritchie]

I've pretty much always kept track of how many hours I write, plus how many words I've written, but I don't begin to write as many words per day as you do.

I think my all-time record is around 12,500 words in one day, but this is decidedly not normal. Most often, when I hit 2,500 words, I call it quits. And if I write only 2,000 words, that's just fine. I almost never go above 3,500 words per day, even when on deadline. Much more than this and the writing quality goes downhill fast. So does my interest.

At best, I write from 400-500 words per hour in longhand, and somewhere around double this at the keyboard. My writing day consists of two sessions, each two and a half hours long.

But, yes, I've always found that keeping track of hours and word count helps.

[victoriastrauss]

With my last novel, I had what for me was a tight deadline, and I thought it might boost my discipline to keep a daily word count log. I did it faithfully for six months, and found it totally unhelpful, except as an aid to guilt (where I really don't need any help at all).

- Victoria

[LightShadow]

I work in the construction industry, so I write when I can squeeze time in. I don't have the luxury of a writing schedule. Sometimes I write a couple hours a week, sometimes all Sunday afternoon. In fact, I'm getting off the forum now so that I can write during the week! I got lucky today. I got home before 7pm. In fact, 6!

[Mistook]

For a long time I never kept track. I spent two weeks writing what I thought was a few quick chapters to start off the novel. Finally I calculated the word count and realized I'd written nearly half a novel's worth of story. Too bad it wasn't the story I intended to write.

I took this half a novel and put it on the back burner as a possible prequel.

My main focus these days is with chapters per week. My chapters always end up being around the same length. When I'm really in the groove, I can write a chapter a night - and that's the pace I'd like to keep.

But longer chapters, and chapters that introduce new characters, or new dimensions of the plot take longer. Coping with back-story is also a big drain on my writing time. I may cycle through five different approaches to a chapter in one week, but not figure out the right way to present it until the sixth day. Every other version will be deleted...

So there's also a difference between raw word-count and the count of the words I'll actually keep.