Word Count & Scab Picking

My friend Noah sent me this article about daily word count and I thought I'd pass it along. I don't know if the article's really helpful, since basically it says every writer is different and works differently (duhhhhh), but I do like the sentiment Stephen King expresses about trying to write the first draft of any novel in about three months, or one season. I try to do the same-when I'm working on a new rough draft I average 5 pages a day, or about 1,200 words, and five pages a day will yield a plentiful 450 pages in three months (and if you're writing a bigger book than that, you must be into it enough that you're not worried about word count anyway).

Writing a rough draft quickly lends plenty of advantages, perhaps the greatest being that you're not allowed to over think too much, which often lends itself to fear, fear that what you're writing is and will always be crap, and if that fear settles in deep enough you may abandon the novel altogether. Perhaps writing a novel is like taking off a band-aid-just rip it off quickly, then let yourself examine the wound at a more leisurely pace, until it cools and grows a fun scab to pick at.

A big part of writing is just sitting down and doing it (thanks, Captain Obvious!)but, luckily, each word counts.