Write Every Day

Write Every Day

All good writers write every day, right? Maybe, maybe not. So why are all aspiring writers told to do it? It creates a good habit that leads to becoming a better writer. Sure, you’ll write a lot of crud, but in all of that, you’re sure to find a gem of an idea. That idea could turn into a publishable story that you’ve been dreaming of.

Now, the concept of writing every day is a scary one. It requires commitment, determination and scheduling. Let’s face it, the world is a busy place and we’re busy people with way too much on our plates and not enough time to eat it all.

So how are we ever going to reach our dream of being a better writer if we don’t have time to write? It seems impossible to make time, but that’s what everyone says to do. I’m afraid that I’m no different. You do have to make time, but you should start small.

Set a goal to write 200 words every day for a week. See if you can do it. Maybe write one piece over the course of the week or write something different every day. It doesn’t matter as long as you write creatively. And don’t edit! That’s not the point here. Editing comes later when you go to revise.

At the end of week, evaluate how you did. Did you miss a day or not make it to 200 words every day? Did you end up writing more than 200 words? Evaluate how you feel about writing every day. Don’t judge what you wrote. Like I said before, you’ll end up writing a lot of garbage before coming up with a treasure.

If you think you can push yourself to the next level, decide whether you want to write more words per day or write for a longer period. Make a decision and go for it. Even if you decide to stay at the same level, go for it. Keep on writing!

If you miss a few days or fall short of your daily goal, it’s okay. Look at how much you have done and be proud of it. Say your goal was 2 weeks of 200 words a day and you missed 4 days. That’s okay. You still wrote 10 days that you may not have otherwise.

No one is perfect, remember you are human and life happens. There are weeks that my brain won’t function creatively and I lament the time wasted. Remember, moderation is also a key here. While it’s good to have drive and motivation, you also have to remember to live life, not just write about it. If you’re getting burned out, take a break. Don’t write. Do something else that you enjoy. You’ll find your batteries recharged when you go back to writing.

To conclude, I’m going to leave you with a few numbers since everyone is so fond of statistics and hard facts. Let’s assume you have an idea for a story and you’ve already outlined it and done character sketches.

If you wrote 200 words a day for 30 days, you’d have written 6,000 words. That’s a solid short story, longer than most WDC contests accept, but about the right word count for many writing contests on the web.

If you wrote 500 words a day for 30 days, you’d have written 15,000 words. According to some, you’d have a novelette.

If you wrote 1,000 words a day for 30 days, you’d have written 30,000 words. That’s usually considered a novella.

November is National Writers’ Month and the challenge is to write 50,000 words. That’s sounds impossible, but not when you break it down and work yourself up over time to the challenge of writing 1,667 words a day for 30 days.

Even if your goal is to write a novel of 50,000 words, but you can’t write 1,667 words a day, you can still do it over a longer period. If you wrote 200 words a day, it would take you 250 days to complete it. A little over 8 months. That seems like a long time, but the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get there. I’ll bet you find you start writing more and more each day and get to your goal much faster than you expect.

Good old Wikipedia offers these as the typical word counts for each classification.
Novel: 50,000+ words
Novella: 20,000 to 50,000 words
Novelette: 7,500 to 20,000 words
Short Story: 1,000 to 7,500 words
Flash Fiction: under 1,000 words


Need help to prepare yourself to write a long piece, check out this article.

ID: 1573385   (Rated: E) Preparing to Write  Techniques to prepare yourself to write a long piece. by Silva Shado

Once you’ve got something written that you like, the next step is revising!

ID: 1573381   (Rated: E) Revise, Revise, Revise  Techniques to help you revise. by Silva Shado