How many of you have a word-a-day goal?

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Prawn

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Longtime lurker, first time poster.

After some trial and error, I set myself a goal of 1000 words a day. I usually get there. Sometimes I may do twice that much, but not very often.

How many of you have a word number goal, and what is it?
Prawn
 

thismakecents

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My target is 250 words a day. I keep track of each day in a notepad document.

8-22-06: 252 words
8-23-06: 253 words
8-24-06: 260 words (rewrote begining of story)
8-25-06: 297 words
8-26-06: 176 words (bad day)
8-27-06: 234 words

So far so good. Though I have yet to write today and I am not in the mood. Too much going on around me at the moment. Hahaha......But I find that 250 words is not that much to push out when I feel like I do, today.
 

SeanDSchaffer

My goal every day is a typewritten page. This generally translates to around 250 to 280 words, depending on how many lines I can get onto a page.
 

Siddow

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It depends on what I'm writing. When I'm doing short stories, I just try to make progress without any set goal. With novels, I shoot for 3000 a day. I like to work on novels quickly. I got in 2100 words this morning before the house woke up, and I'm going to try and get in two more 1000 word sessions today because I want to finish this draft by the end of September and I'll be out of town for three days mid-month.
 

aadams73

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2000 words. I make this goal every week day, and often go over. On the weekends I'm not so strict and I shoot for about 500.
 

KTC

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I do not confine myself. I may write no words one day and 10,000 the next. So, no limits. Why would I bother?
 

Julie Worth

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I used to have a 2000 word goal, but then realized that editing and rewriting took so much more time, that a daily goal seemed a bit silly.
 

Prawn

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I was curious when I saw people only writing two hundred words a day, but then I figured out they were also working on revisions, which takes time. I don't do much revision as I write. I find it slows me down. I might put a note like "Clean up tenses here" or "Didn't they meet before?" but other than that I am trying to get a draft done before I revise. That means I spend most of my time just writing. As to Siddow and Aadams73, I think I could only write two or three thousand words a day reliably if I had time for two sessions, like one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I don't have time for that at the moment.
 

Southern_girl29

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I didn't before, but with this new book, I have decided that I want a goal to work toward, beside the obvious of finishing it. My first night writing, I wrote 1,200 words. Last night, I wrote 1,500. I want to work my way up to 2,000 and do that every night if I can.
 

jbal

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I try to hit 1000 a day, but in reality I probably average about 700 or so. But that's counting days when I don't write at all.
 

Papa'sLiver

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I shoot for at least 1000 a day, but end up doing about 1200 on average. And that's 7 days a week until the draft is done. Rewriting is totally different, of course. I usually try for x number of pages a day during a rewrite. I like to feel the forward movement, as I'm very goal oriented in nature.
 

blackbird

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I don't worry about word goals. Often in the past, I would set a goal of working up to or past a certain scene, or perhaps of completing a single chapter. However, this method more often than not failed me because I usually err on the side of being overly optimistic about how much I can realistically accomplish in one setting. Thus, it would sometimes end up taking me ten or more hours to get to that big scene I promised to close with, or to wrap up that single chapter. And so I would eventually give up for the day, not because I'd reached my goal, but out of sheer exhuastion. Not to mention the frustration of realizing I had failed to complete my goal for the day (call me obsessive-compulsive, but that's the way I operate).

Nowadays I find it much simpler, and more realistic, to simply set a goal in terms of hours. I'll say, okay, this morning I am going to write for five hours (or however many I can realistically manage that day). What I accomplish within those five hours is what I've accomplished for the day. Period. This seems to work for me, and as long as I put my allotted goal for the day to productive use, I don't have to walk away from the computer beating myself up for feeling like a failure (which I did so often via my other method).
 

TwentyFour

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I try for 500/1000/1500 but since my surgery friday I have not written anything. I have pain and stitches in my belly so balancing a laptop on the tummy is a bit hard. I had written near 900 that Thursday and hope to continue. I got in nearly 10,000 over the past two weeks so I'm not at a loss right now. I'm not falling too behind either...I write it for the time. When it's June, I write the June section, then when July, I write the July section...so on...so forth.

My town has certain events each year, each month, so I am trying to keep up with the events that were around here in the fifties. So far I am keeping up fine.
 

eldragon

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My writing schedule looks like this:

10 days in a row - 2000 words a day.
Following 10 days: no writing at all.



Right now, I'm in the second phase.:cry:
 

Isanthe

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I like to aim for 2k or 4 hours, but it's more accurate to say that I aim for genuine effort. At the end of the day I know if I honestly worked hard, and if I fall a little short because I was writing a particularly hard section, I don't beat myself up over it.
 

Prawn

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I admire those of you who have four or five hours a day. I have a wife and two small children, so my time is not my own. In fact, so far in this email I've had to wipe one daughter's bottom, and talk to one about the new bubble bath. However, even if I had four or five hours by spend, I find that I generally am smoking hot for about an hour and get 1000 words done, but then if I keep going, I slow down, so I might only get 2000 words done in 4 hours. For me the best is to do an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. I did that few times over the summer and it was very fulfulling.
 

Alan Yee

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I don't keep track of exactly how many hours I usually write. I know I've probably written at least 2 or 3 hours (possibly more) a day this summer while I'm off school. My goal is to write, on average, a minimum of 1,000 words per day, though I usually write more, depending on how intense the scene is. I usually do a light revision on what I wrote the previous day, write until I finish the chapter or scene, and perhaps start the next one. There's some days where I only write a few hundred or under a thousand words, while there's been days that I write 2-3,000. I figure that if I aim for 1,000, I can realistically reach it and write even more.

Now, once school starts on September 5th, my routine will probably change. I'll probably write a lot less on weekdays and write a lot on weekends and holidays. That's life, so I'll have to work it in. Frankly, I've written so much this summer that it makes up for the days during the school year when I don't write as much. It averages out to 1,000+, though.
 

Qelenhn

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I stopped having a word limit for the day when I realized I would get there and stop, even when things were going well. Any type of arbitrary minimum I set for myself or attempt to reward myself for ends up causing this. I find it better to direct myself by scene. That way, if it's going well, my lazy side doesn't convince me to stop when I hit my word count. I'm actually trying to push myself towards a chapter a week at the moment.
 

John61480

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I like the brief bit that Jamesaritchie mentioned along with his word count, which was the number of hours spent. I would rather find time for 3-4 hours a day than a modest word count of say, 2000 words.
 

mistri

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I give myself a goal of 1000 to aim towards, but am happy with anything over 500 words.

There are times in the month (there are regular monthly deadlines at work that throw everything into chaos), when I get very little done, but I don't beat myself up about it. I just do my best with the time I have.
 
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