Let's talk about word count goals and TOXIC productivity

I do 30min-1h in the morning and 30min-1h in the evening as part of my daily routine. When I miss one of the two I am fine because I am happy with at least writng 30min a day. I track word count and time, but just to see my progress over time and feeling good about my effort. ❤😎

Almost all of my "productive" writing sessions come in the form of writing sprints in a discord server or getting together with a few writers and working side by side. For me, if I spend 30-60 minutes and don't feel like I've been distracted the whole time then I'm happy with it as a session. I don't count worldbuilding or research as being distracted. Often if I've written for an hour, I wind up writing for two, but I don't try to write every day. I want to make a career out of this so I will be trying to write more in the future, but I'm coming from a place of mild physical disability and still learning my limits. I'm basically taking December off (Still writing, but with no pressure to do so.) because I really burned out during November.

i like word count progress tracking more than word count goal setting ❤ it's less of a pressure but more of a motivation ❤ i look at word count as to how long far i have come to from a blank page instead of how much there is to come or how much of the the journey there's still left in writing ❤ it's like a pat on the back telling myself "you've got this! you've come a long way and you'll be able to go through all this at what speed you're comfortable with"

true on the millionaire morning routine videos 😂 that's why i would watch parodies of those for fun 😂

Power through vs Taking a break--Yes! So hard.

"....the amount of Cheetos consumer. Fair" 💯

Hahaha, the SNL parody of it all...

GREAT VIDEO! I have a wordcount tip to add. Choose an easily reachable word count goal for the day, instead of a stretch goal. That way you don't feel bad for missing your goal, and you can always write more! For example, if 500 (or 1k ) WPD is easily reachable for you, but you'd LIKE to reach 1k (or 2k) per day, then set your goal on the lower end. Then you'll feel really good when you hit those 600 words (and inspired for the next session, instead of defeated), instead of bad for not reaching your goal! (IF you want to do the words-per-day thing; or for whenever your "writing days" are) :)

I liked tracking my word count, because then I could see improvement over time. She's right, it's so important NOT to compare your word counts with others. Just you. You're only competing against yourself.
I used to practice touch typing with RapidTyping (free) before every writing session, for YEARS. That helped me get my writing speed to an average of 2k WPH. (No, I didn't start there! But I only know this because of tracking my word counts).

Your opening!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
(Yes, I LOVED learning about ideal morning routines from Robin Sharma in 2012-2015. It made a difference, but I could only fit in like 15 minutes before Day Job).

"You achieve quality through quantity." Thank you! :)

Words are more accurate than the annoying pages, but I find them less productive, since 1page is WAY bigger than 15words

If I can write in a day, I try 300 words. I'll usually get more, but on days that I have no inspiration or motivation, I can manage 300 words.

Practice makes perfect, I guess.

I keep forgetting to track my word count, but I'm trying!
Also curious at the difference between what I write vs what I type, since I write long hand first, then type.

Haha, the intro.

A productive day is if I get through a large chunk of the section of my book I'm in. Typically this is at most 10 pages.

I didn't think i could laugh out five times in the span of twenty seconds :D Haven't even seen the rest of the vid yet and it's already gold.

Mostly because I start my day at three and write till five-thirty

I think it's good we all have different writing styles and goals. It reflects how we write different genres of books for different audiences.

The opening...OMG. I couldn't stop laughing!
As for me setting goals? Err... um... sigh

During NaNo or CampNaNo (which is where I do the bulk of my drafting, just because I like the community and the atmosphere) I usually have a daily word count goal and on most days I keep writing until I hit that.. Or, if I know that I have days when I can spend less time on writing, I try to get my word count up on the days leading up to that so that I have a cushion. But outside of those events, I think more in time goals. Like I try to get one hour of writing (and/or editing) in on work days and two to three hours on days when I don't have to work. And once in a while I have days where I don't do any work on my writing projects at all and that's okay as well.

I love this video, especially that story about the two groups taking photos and how quantity actually helps you grow and get better, so fascinating! Also on a side note, I love your video editing style. I'm binge watching all your videos now haha! :D

I used to base my productivity on word count, but at this point it's more about how I feel when I'm writing. If I can keep going without stopping to grab a snack or social media, it means that I actually got into the story and wasn't distracted and procrastinating. One of the novellas I have out right now took me 5 days to write; I'd say that was my most productive writing experience!

My productive work to me comes from three different... points, I'll call them.

The first one is the mindset. If I don't feel like I can write forward, or I hit a certain snag in my book and don't know how to proceed, I'll stop myself and temporarily get distracted by something, such a game or a video or whatnot to try and get the ideas flowing.

My second point is distractions such as Social Media, things to do like chores or animals, and making sure they're all done and finished before I sit down at my PC to crack on with writing. My brain nags me in a sense to get everything done before I start, so I don't have to worry about anything stopping me.

The third one comes from, surprisingly, music. I find it very hard to stay focused when I write for longer than a set time, and music allows me to write further than I normally do and keep on track. Some of it does influence my writing, and even songs can give me that push in a direction I believe will fit.

I've re-written my book 5 times now....

I only use word count on the first draft. It forces me to get the basic story out. After that, I define my success by how well I revised a scene or a chapter.

This is by far the best video I've seen on this topic. Really puts a lot of things in perspective for me. Thank you.

Thank you so much for doing this. I have depression so it’s hard to keep going some days and meet goals. Now I find it helps me to just be grateful for anything I get done instead of telling myself off for not being as fast as others on here and social media. I still like watching and supporting them though.

I write better in longer spurts where I get into a flow state. Most of the time, I draft by handwriting and then dictate that into type. I don't count words during the zero draft, or even scenes. I just count number of days I have done "author work" in a month which at this time means, handwriting until my hand hurts, dictating until I'm too tired, throat is tired, or doing some editing of the dictated part to clean it up until my body hurts too much or I'm mentally tired. I don't do "author work" daily as I work full time and have health issues. But, moving my two projects I'm working on at this time forward regularly is productivity. I do have word count goals though. I have a deadline for a developmental edit so currently I need to add $16,500 words to my fiction a month to get to about the word count I want for this fiction over the next four months and then I'll have two months of more editing before it is scheduled to go to a developmental editor. I measure word count weekly and hope to get between 4k and 5K. I have to dictate scenes handwritten to do this, so my work is not fast. I can't seem to dictate directly yet. I'm trying to do that a little.

This is the first video I’ve watched of yours and I LOVED it! Thank you for this conversation, I’m so excited to watch more videos from you!

I hope this video never gets a single dislike for as long as it exists 💓💖

I'm not sure if you have made a video on this but for a fantasy book how much world building should be worked on?

I write a scene and just stop when the inspiration energy runs out. If I am editing I give myself an hour.

I began writing back in 2007 and at the time, I churned out a couple would be novels. Then they sat until 2020. Covid boredom made me dust them off and I finally got around to releasing them. I just released two other books this year. I write when the muse hits. Some days, I can churn out thousands of words and other days, I struggle for hours over one paragraph. I never put pressure on myself to produce X amount in such in such a time. It just sort of happens when it happens. I've always subscribed to the Gandalf belief that a story begins and ends precisely when it means to. Same thing with a chapter. It begins and ends precisely when it means to. This is what works for me.

I’ve never tracked my word count, I usually track chapters or scenes. This week my goal is to revise and edit 10 chapters. Whether I get it done in five days or two, as long as I get it done by week’s end.

I so agree with this, I track but I only really look at the numbers at the end of the month so its not hanging over every session. And everyone works differently and thats okay!

In 2020 it was so hard for me to write because I was concentrating on the actual quality of writing. This was most likely because I was in such a rush to want to publish. I’m glad I took a step back just to write what I wanted even if it is terrible lol I’m having fun with the writing again. I have been focusing on quantity in words this year and not worrying about quality yet. I just want to finish my 0 drafts and they can be super messy. But I have also found that the quality of those words come out during revision.

But I also like how you mention the comments on productivity because it was down this month for me. I was feeling a little bad but I’ve also accepted the fact that I feel more like reading this month to escape the stress of my classes.

My productive writing session depends on a lot of things but mainly I feel good about a session if I like what is happening in the scene. During 0 drafting I usually just free write until something interesting comes up and when I find how that can tie in to the larger plot, I feel good.

So is it weird that each time I watch one of these videos I think, “I want to be her friend. I’m so here for this level of sass.” Millionaire morning parody is pure gold! 😂🦄🤣
I did this poll and wondered how you were going to use it. Toxic productivity is a thing. Love the quality vs. quantity discussion. It makes sense that writing is like any other art it’s better and better with practice.
I try to count pages written per day. Then I usually average the same number of pages per session. The swings didn’t look as wild when journaling progress. Easier for me to stay positive about the days I could only do 1 or 2 pages a day. Thank you for this content.

I've tried tracking word counts, scenes, time, and now I am using chapters. Word count was good for me when I was trying to work the writing muscle. It used to be that 200 words was a great day for me when I started writing and now I can get just over 1000 words in an hour. The problem I had with word count was I couldn't track how far into the book I was, so I switched to scenes. It helped some, because I could pinpoint the plot point I was hitting. I did time when I was feeling really burned out and it was a great way for me to nuture myself back into a writing habit because it didn't matter how many words I got in the session as long as I sat down to write for an hour. Chapters is what is working for me right now because I have written enough that I can figure out roughly how many chapters I am going to need based on my outline and I am completeing a whole thing everyday which helps my brain. I'm also able to see my progress through the whole a lot easier.

I've gone through a lot of iterations in my productivity journey. I have really had to force myself down from the hyper-productive mindset because it just left me feeling anxious all the time. I'm not even sure what I feared. Maybe that I was always behind? Anyway, I read Atomic Habits and found The One Thing podcast recently, and I like how they present systems as more important than goals.

My productive day is just writing 1 chapter every weekday and then working on one other writing business thing each day. The rest of my time is usually full of farm work and I am busy with baby chicks. If I feel like writing on the weekends and I have time and space to do it, then I give myself permission to, but otherwise the weekends are for family.

Wow, it's really inspiring, I can't thank you enough for this video ! As you say, productivity is an individual thing, some write full time, others don't. I think the best thing to do is not to set the bar too high, I learned that in many aspects and certainly in writing. Of course it would not be the same if it was my job, but since it's not the case I now have a routine in which I wake up 45 minutes before time to spend this time working in my book (outlining, writing, editing, whatever work I feel like doing that is related to my book). Since I do that, I feel good because I never cheated and done something else, and I've always used this time before work. After four months of respecting this routine, guess what ? : I often have energy during the day to tackle another 30 or 60 minutes on my book, because I feel great about my humble goal that I achieved in the morning and want to do more. If I had an unrealistic goal, often I'd be discouraged because I could not do it. As always, great video, I find them very inspirational, you are a great teacher and motivator ! :)

A good day writing for me is 1000 words, I normally write around 500 and I still consider that a win.

But secretly I cry because I’m not more productive, toxic productivity is such a thing. I’ve seen the quality of my words improve and that is enough. ❤️

I snort laughed at the beginning of this video! Ha! I like to write in timed sprints. It pushes me to not be perfect, to just keep writing until the time is up. It gets words on the page that I can then fix (and boy, they need fixing!)

This is a great video, and you make a really good point that "quality vs quantity" isn't really a helpful way to think about these things. They are not opposites, they can co-exist, and also being productive doesn't necessarily mean achieving either one of them. Sometimes when I've been sitting for half an hour and only written 100 words, and words that I'm not even happy with as such, I can still feel productive, because hey, I wrote those words. That's 100 words and 30 minutes worth of effort closer to finishing the story, and even if those specific words will be deleted in the next draft, I needed to write them in order to get to the good ones.
When to push yourself and when to give yourself a break is such a tricky thing to figure out, though, and my strategy so far is to try. Force myself to sit down and write, and if I don't get into it, then it's not time and I shouldn't do it. But I can do it like that because I don't have deadlines. When I had deadlines for school, and I imagine in the future when more professional deadlines for my writing start coming in, other strategies were/will be necessary.

I'm more interested in the writing habit—getting my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard. That said, I set Word Count Goals, but at three levels. The middle level goal, I know I can hit on an average day. For those days that are difficult for writing, there is a lower level goal. And when the words are flowing, I have a higher goal. This way I never feel bad at the end of a writing session. Actually, I'm amazed at the productivity.

I just love your videos, you say it as it is, and it is SO refreshing. Personally, I aim for anywhere between 1k to 1.5k words a day, which I can easily hit within an hour if I'm focused. It's a good goal for me because I know I can hit it (even if on tougher days I may have to do 3 writing sessions to get there), and I also know I'll usually go beyond my goal once I'm in the zone. Thank you for keeping it real!

Recently, I've found that writing to "ends" (end of scene, end of chapter) works better for me. It gives me a sense of progress and completion that helps me to step away so I don't drown in the idea of what's left. Word counts are just waaaay too easy for me to see how much is left in the book and that distance is paralyzing. Especially near the beginning.

It's complicated. Because my brain works in numbers, if I say I will write for 20 minutes, I gets tressed if I write for 19 or 21. If I say that I want to write 3k words today, then that motivates me. Looking at the number and thinking, I'm 20% there, I'm halfway there, just 400 more words and I'm there, and passing it gives a high. So that is one way to measure my productivity, because I also use it as a tool to get down and write, it's my kick in the butt. Sitting down and thinking, "I'm going to write 50 words today" and that gives the same high, and gets me moving.

Another way I measure productivity, is when I write a sentece, a piece of dialogue or a description that makes me smile, or that I want to nag my friend about (he's got to be so sick and tired of me sending random screenshots and quotes) that makes me feel like I've made something. Or just getting through that stupid scene I didn't want, or seeing that the scene I'm itching for is getting closer and closer.

Did that answer the question, probably not, is this how my brain answers stuff though, yep. 😂😂