How many chapters a day?

between four and five chapters a day is the minimum most professional writers do, and upwards of seven on a good day. of course, they spend a few weeks editing and doing other drafts. right around 35,000 words a day is where you want to be at.

good luck!

I don't go for chapter-counts, since my chapters vary in size.

When I'm deep into the process, I try for three pages a day, which takes me about three hours. (I'm slow, but I write finished prose.) I do a little better than that minimum on average--over the course of a book I usually manage five pages a day. (I once wrote thirty-two pages in a day, but that involved 16 hours at the keyboard, and it was very close to the end of the book.)

Hemingway went for 250 words a day, or roughly a page.

Lawrence Block seems to average five pages a day on most books.

Stephen King writes about 10 pages a day.

James Joyce usually managed about seven words a day, net. (He wrote and then crossed out a lot.)

In other words, t's all over the board.

Part of it has to do with how you work. People who do massive revision in the second draft tend to write faster first drafts. Folks like John Lescroart, who do months of advance planning and plotting can do the actual writing in a couple of months.

Another way to look at the problem is: A book a year is considered fairly prolific. For a page-by-page perfectionist, that might mean a page per day. For a slam-it-down-and-sort-it-out-later type, that might mean ten pages day, with nine pages ultimately ending up cut.

If you're averaging between one and ten pages a day across time, you're in the ballpark.

Preyer, shame on you! You're going to scare the newbies away forever.

Ennigma, how many chapters you write in a day depends on how many words you write each day and how many words are in each chapter. If I told you I wrote one chapter a day, does that mean I'm cranking out 500 words or 5000? You'd have no idea unless you knew how many words were in my chapters.

Writers talk word count not chapter count. Me, I generally write between 1250 words on a very unproductive day to 3500 on a very productive day. Others can write much faster than that. Still others write slower.

preyer said:

right around 35,000 words a day is where you want to be at.

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If this isn't a typo I don't know what to do.

I get about 1,000 words done per day. Since my chapters are very short, that's normally almost a full chapter.

If I get an entire chapter done in one day, it's been a phenomenal day. My chapters on the current project are running between 1500-2200 words. Usually, I get about 700 words a day, or so.

preyer said:

right around 35,000 words a day is where you want to be at.

good luck!

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The smiley is because he's pulling your leg, but for the benefit of Ennigma I'll note that 35,000 words a day is roughly 140 pages per day. If you write for for eight hours a day, that would be 4,375 word per hour, or 73 words per minute. Most people can't type that fast, let alone compose that fast.

Even 3,500 words per day would be 14 pages a day, which isn't impossible but is a pretty durn good clip, buckaroo.

Hokay thank God. I had a few seizures over here upon reading that number.

damnit, i can't... your question was just so darn cute, though.

really, one successful writer does what they do, another does it differently. start off with a reasonable goal, say a thousand words a day. if you've the time and inclination to do more, great, i say go for it. in my critiquing experience, the chapters i see are often in the 2,000 to 3,000 word range. give or take. don't hold yourself to a professional yardstick, you won't be able to compete: this is what professional writers do (that is, those who's sole living is made from writing), some move wickedly fast and have a minimal polishing time due to huge amounts of experience. other professional writers are like you and me, with jobs and school, who write when they can (often having to make the time). yes, i'd venture to say most professional writers aren't making a living at it, they've got day jobs.

it's good you asked, but i think your expectations are a bit high for most of us, lol. 1,500 decent words a day that aren't a complete and utter mess is doing okay if you ask me. a professional who had nothing else to do in a day other than find the wherewithal to wake up before noon, run some errands and spend six hours a day reading and writing will most likely do more, but who really knows how many words they crank out after they do their blogs.

what say you, y'all, 1,500-3,000 words a day sound fair for most of us after we kinda sorta get into the swing of things?

Yes. You big meanie.

A chapter a day is the goal, somedays I write more, others I write less. Today I managed to write a whole chapter, but after writing it I know I need to go back and turn it into a scene (it's more telling/info dump). But that's okay; this is only the first draft. My goal is to get the story written, then go back and fix stuff and make it pretty.

35,000 words? That's like, well, almost half a novel!

I try to get 2,000-3,000 a day. Anything less, frankly, is a crappy day and I know I'm not plugged in the right way.

When I'm going good, when the stars are aligned properly and all that (and I swear to God there's something about the magnetic fields and my writing ability; or else I just get male PMS sometimes and can't write worth a damn), I can get 10,000 a day.

I personally never go to bed until I've written five chapters daily which comes in at around 20,000 words.

That's in between spring cleaning the house, working ten jobs, bringing about world peace, developing a cure for cancer, fighting crime in my cape with a sidekick, and making sammiches for my supper.

I'm happy when I get 1 chapter a day, but most of my chapters run 6-8k. On an average day I get about 3k done.

scarletpeaches said:

I personally never go to bed until I've written five chapters daily which comes in at around 20,000 words.

That's in between spring cleaning the house, working ten jobs, bringing about world peace, developing a cure for cancer, fighting crime in my cape with a sidekick, and making sammiches for my supper.

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I do it all without a sidekick.

Loser.

david, i'm assuming she's working 16 hours a day. sorry, en, i was just teasin'... like i said, it was just so darn cute.

when i can sit down and am in the mood, 1500-2000 is pretty darn good for me. most of it isn't a complete waste, or so i'd like to think. i would, however, advise you to really strive for more than seven words a day. i think that's well within a person's ability. if 700 is what you, then that's what you do. there is absolutely not one reason to beat yourself up over it. it's not a race, all that matters is the quality of those 700 words. let me add that of that 1500 words i could do in a day, i'd spend twice as much time, at least, fixing things and thinking about it, editing, revising, etc.. so, in fact, if you wrote 700 words a day that's actually 700 words a day, you're probably spending a lot less time with your story than i am.

i picked a thousand words a day for you just as a goal. david probably has more knowledge about it than i do, but a book a year doesn't sound particularly prolific to me. that's just me. i should add that if you're making a product to be sold, one a year probably isn't going to get you that porsche any time soon, and by product i mean stuff to sell, not the next great american novel or some personal masterpiece. it's certainly not inconceivable to do one and a half, two or three pieces of product a year (probably unlikely you'd do three and not have them be pretty run of the mill type fare, i'm just sayin').

if you hung out around 90K words per novel, did 2K words a day, that's basically a month and a half of writing the first draft. figure you spend twice as long with other drafts and polishing, shoot, that's not even six months. assuming that you know what you're doing and have experience at it, i don't think this is unreasonable at all... for a product. i think it's fair to say that most of those writers david mentioned had pretention towards being an artist, eh? plus, most didn't have the benefits of computers: i wonder how much hemingway *would* have written if he had a computer? (probably not much more, lol.)

and i'll add that in long-hand i'm probably closer to 5-700. but it's a better quality, usually.

Think in terms of wordcount

Chapters can be two words or 10k words...any range in between or even larger. Wordcount is a much more reliable system. Part of wordcount will be how fast you type/handwrite and how long you can concentrate in one day.

When I was doing my most prose writing, I could get about 1200 words per day, usually in about an hour or two. Then my brain overheated, and that was my writing for the day. Outlining, I can do a lot more because I'm not worried about the actual prose.

So, it's definitely a your milage may vary situation. Best you can do is sit down and write. Keep track of your word count, and see what happens.

Good luck!

scarletpeaches said:

That's in between spring cleaning the house, working ten jobs, bringing about world peace, developing a cure for cancer, fighting crime in my cape with a sidekick, and making sammiches for my supper.

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You have crime in your cape?! Good lord! I'll be right over.

preyer said:

between four and five chapters a day is the minimum most professional writers do, and upwards of seven on a good day. of course, they spend a few weeks editing and doing other drafts. right around 35,000 words a day is where you want to be at.

good luck!

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LOL. That's just mean.

-Jason

I think I average about one to two chapters a day, but I don't really keep track.

Usually I just write until I hit a wall. And then stop to figure out a way to get through, around, under or over it.

Damnit. Everyone beat me to the obsequiously large numbers.

I was going to say that I write 27,000 chapters a day. Which I do. Every day.

I go along the "save it all up for a blow out kind of day!" group. I have to write longhand, because I can't get my fingers out of their cramp, but I'll put out 2,500-4,000 words, then not write for a day or two. Or three.

But yes, you should be working toward more than one a year, whether you make them available to the public or not. Most popular authors have a title or two that their families cash in on in their grief, so don't let your family down.

canteloupe1020 said:

I go along the "save it all up for a blow out kind of day!" group. I have to write longhand, because I can't get my fingers out of their cramp, but I'll put out 2,500-4,000 words, then not write for a day or two. Or three.

But yes, you should be working toward more than one a year, whether you make them available to the public or not. Most popular authors have a title or two that their families cash in on in their grief, so don't let your family down.

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Maybe your fingers are cramped because you're writing longhand? Ouches. I couldn't do it.

Yeah...
I don't write a chapter a day. I shoot for at least 500 words, am so happy when I get 1000 and am overjoyed if I get 1500. Since i started working 12 hour days several times a week, I try to get that 1000+ when I have a day off to make up for lost time.

FYI my chapters tend to be over 3500 words, so a 1000 a day is a little less than 1/3 of my chapter.

Hm... don't even count. I couldn't even give you an estimate. I get up, drink coffee, pet the cats and write until I run out of ideas or have to go to work, whichever comes first. Works for me. I remember when I first came here, I would read a question like that and all the answers and think "Oh, my gosh! I'm not doing it that way. I'm such a loser!" ha. A handful of requests and a drawerful of rejections later I think, "Hm, interesting how others do it."