Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips
I prove to myself that I can write 1,000 words a day with one hour writing per day.
I’ve been conducting a writing experiment. I wanted to learn if I could write at a pace that would produce 300,000 words in a year. This pace means 50 weeks, of the 52 in the year, six days a week, 1,000 words a day. The sub-goal is to write the 1,000 words in one hour.
Well, I could do it.
This 300,000-word goal comes from writer Dean Wesley Smith. I couldn’t find the specific post of his, but here is the link to his blog. Here is a link to another blog that mentions the same topic.
I type fast enough to bang out about 1,200 words in an hour. I do more if I don’t have to punch lots of punctuation. Recently, however, I have been writing fiction with many conversations, and those conversations require punctuation marks everywhere.
I find that I can write one hour, proof read one hour, and then piddle around with ideas one hour. Three hours work in a day (something that Dean Wesley Smith discusses at length).
What is magical about 300,000 words. Well, as Smith explains, a novel is about 70,000 words these days. You can write four novels in a year at the 1,000 words a day pace. ePublishing makes four novels in a year possible. Traditional paper back book publishers wouldn’t allow a writer to write that many novels in the past. Smashwords and other iPublishing outlets are happy with this.
I don’t think I will write 1,000 words a day six days a week, but it is nice to know that I could do it.