Keeping Track of Your Word Count: Does It Work?

Last year, I did a lot of rewriting, but not so much new writing. So one of my goals this year is to keep the new writing flowing. It doesn't matter if I only work on something for ten minutes a day. My reasoning: even ten or twenty words is better than zero words. 

At the beginning of January, I started something I heard about on The Creative Penn podcast (Are You Meeting Your Writing Goals? Try These Productivity Tips for Writers). I stuck a tiny January calendar in my writing book and began keeping track of how many words I wrote each day. I didn't know if it would really help to keep me writing, but I'm happy to report that it has. Some of the benefits: 

1) Keeping the flow going. Maybe it's just the story I'm working on, but I do find it's easier to get back into the story for each writing session.

2) More pencil on paper writing. Sometimes when I'm tired at the end of the day, I'll realize I haven't worked on my story. And I feel a twinge of guilt because I haven't filled in anything on my chart. So I get out my writing notebook (going to the computer is too much trouble because at this point I'm probably lying in bed). Since I don't have a backspace key, I just write freely about something I think might happen in the story. I know I can always fix it up later when I type it in. 

3) Experimenting with the writing process. With my previous novels, I wrote all the scenes in order. But now I have this chart. I don't want to be stuck. I want to get something done so I record it, so I just work on whatever scene catches my interest. If I don't know what comes next, I skip to the next thing that I know is going to happen. I'm not sure what this will do to the end product but I'm finding that the process is more fun. I spend less time thinking about what I'm going to write each day. (It also helps that I have a plan with some major scenes and an ending so I know where I'm going.)

Would I recommend keeping track of your word count?

I'm not sure it would work if I started obsessing about the exact number of words I wrote each day. That'd be too much pressure. But it is motivating to write something on that calendar every day. It's okay with me if it's just a paragraph or even a sentence. Of course, once I get thinking about my story, it usually turns into more.

Tips for Being A More Productive Writer

I'm not going to share the usual tips on decreasing your social media time to increase your writing time, because we all know we'd be more productive if we spent our writing time actually DOING the writing. But I'm always looking for ways to write more. I've recently discovered three things that help:

Set a Quota

Following the advice of Joanna Penn in How to Write More and And Create a Daily Writing Habit and James Scott Bell in How To Work on More Than One Book at a Time, I've been setting a daily goal or quota for how many words to every day, and trying to stick with it.

Trying to meet a quota means that I'm thinking about my story every day. Momentum builds and carries me on to the next part of the story. It's hard some days. But every time I write 100 words, I'm 100 words closer to finishing my story.


Re-Read First...But Not Right Before

 

You know how your best ideas always come when you're in the shower, driving to work or walking the dog? This may sound crazy, but one day I thought, why shouldn't those best ideas be about my current project? If I read a chapter or a couple of pages of my project before I walk the dog or drive the kids to school, it gets my brain primed for writing later. Even if I don't have time to sit down at my desk right away, the story is in my head when I do get a chance to work on it.

This also helps with the problem of spending all my writing time rewriting yesterday's work. Because I've already done the re-reading a while before, I've already been working on it, somewhere in my subconscious. I can quickly skim and get on with the new part. 

 

Don't Write Too Much

Is it possible to write too much? Sometimes I get so obsessed with writing that it takes over other parts of my life. A couple of hours can zip by like nothing, even if all I've written is a paragraph. So lately I'm making sure writing stays in its place and doesn't spill over into time with my family or time for taking care of myself. Surprisingly, when I do write, I'm more focused.

Do you have any tips for being a more productive writer?


 

New Agent for MG and YA...Plus Writing This Week

In case you missed it, Tara Gonzales, a new agent at the Larsen Pomada Literary Agency, accepts submissions for picture books, middle grade and young adult works. For more details, check out Introducing Agent Tara Gonzalez over at Kris Asselin's blog.  

How was your writing this week? Sometimes when I’m working on my own writing, it's like I'm a magnet for new strategies and ideas that I don't really have time to try out. This week I ended up with lots of ideas and fuel for my own writing. Here are a few of the things that caught my interest:

1) James Scott Bell at the KillZone on How to Work on More Than One Book At A Time.

I'm always on the lookout for ways to get more writing finished. After reading this, now I’m determined not only to make sure I finish at least one scene of my work-in-progress every day (my latest middle grade novel) but also to spend a little time working on a different project (even if it’s only doodling in my notebook while I watch TV).

2) People Who Are Not Like You by author Patricia C. Wrede, on how to write characters that are not like yourself.

It’s much easier to assume a character has some of your own background and experiences. I realize I need to examine my characters even more closely to make sure the non-me parts are believable.

“The greater the differences between the writer and the character, the more aware the writer has to be of how the differences affect everything else in the character’s life.”  

3) Since my new not-yet-started project has some fairytale elements, I found the latest Writing Excuses podcast on Retellings and Adaptations so useful I listened to it twice. I especially liked the idea of playing around with a plot that already works to create a new story.

 

Did you come across anything that gave you a new perspective this week?