Writing a Million Words a Year

I was reading a story recently about a writer, who already had two traditionally published novels, when she had a baby. She also had a full-time job. He husband, in his infinite wisdom, decided that writing, working, and family obligations were too much for her, so for the time being he said she should stop writing, and instead spend her time at home spending time with him and their new daughter.

Stop writing? What a dangerous thing to say to a writer.

Fast forward a year later, and she tells him that she's just had her latest book accepted by her publisher.

It turns out, she'd been using her lunch hour at work to write her novel.

Her husband was furious and accused her of being unfaithful. They had a huge fight about it and she was upset because he still wasn't speaking to her.

I thought, wow. This woman has a full-time job and is clearly a good mother and wife, yet her husband is angry at what she does at lunch time at work.

Writing during lunch at work is also how J K Rowling wrote her second Harry Potter book. Her first one was written when she was an unemployed single parent (which she hated) so she got a job once her first book was published and started her second. She wrote so much at work that one of her female colleagues eventually asked her if she was having an affair because she always turned down 'lunch with the girls'.

What all this goes to demonstrate is how easy it is to write a book if your determined to do so. And the important word here is DETERMINED. Just one hour a day helped these writers produce best-selling novels.

This year I plan to have my best writing year ever and write a book a month. So far I'm on track. I'm actually ahead of schedule.

I'm also currently reading a book about pulp fiction writers who used to be only paid by word count so they had to write a lot in order to earn a living.

They used average a million words a year. Some even wrote one and a half million words a year.

So I worked it out (with the help of my trusty calculator). 

To write a million words a year, if you wrote for 5 days a week, you'd need to write 3,800 words a day. 

Even if you only wrote during your lunch hour on week days, at 1,000 words an hour, you could still write 261,000 words a year (261 working days a  year).

So if you want to up your game (and it's certainly got my interest) to a million words a year, you need to write 3,800 words a day, 5 days a week.

Or if you want to write every day, it's a mere 2,700 words a day.

How about it?

What's your average daily word count?

If you don't know, try writing as much as you can in one week, and then divide it by 7. 

That will give you your daily average.

Then try and beat it every week.

Start today.

Writer Without A Clue

I bought an eBook a few weeks ago and it was fascinating to read.

It’s called “Writing Into The Dark” and it’s written by prolific author, Dean Wesley Smith.

He has written hundreds of books and short stories and this book is all about his writing process.

He calls what he does “Writing Into The Dark” because he begins all his novels and short stories (which are not so short because they’re all thousands of words long) and he has no clue how the story will start or end.

He begins with just a few words, or an incomplete idea in his head, and then he just starts writing with no idea as to how the story will develop or end. He doesn’t even know who the characters are until he makes them up as he goes along.

Writing this way would scare the pants off me. I can’t imagine sitting down to write a novel and not even know what it’s going to be about.

I have done free-writing exercises before where I’m given 3 random words and I have to write about them, or write a story that includes them, for 5 minutes without stopping.

I can actually write ¾ page this way, but it feels weird to have no direction with what I’m writing. Yet strangely enough, what I write in those 5 minutes without any forethought, is quite good. In fact I’ve expanded some of them into published articles and stories.

So maybe ‘Writing Into The Dark’ is a creative way to do things.

After all, it’s the way Dean Wesley Smith has been writing novels for years.

Either way, it was fascinating to read his book about his whole writing process.

https://amzn.to/3pYpS2B

How to Write More And More And More…

Do you dream of writing more? Do you see yourself sitting and writing and having hundreds of published books and selling thousands of copies every month?

If you do then it’s time to stop dreaming and start writing.

And although you’d love it if I told you a “secret” to getting more writing done,  I’m not going to tell you any such thing. In fact, I’m going to tell you the opposite.

The only way to write more is to have more bum-in-chair time and actually get your writing done. It really is that straight forward and simple.

But this is good news because when you spend more time writing, it help you in 3 ways.

1. You get more writing done. Successful writers are prolific writers and so that’s what you need to be too. The more time you spend writing, the more writing you’ll get done. It’s so so logical.
2. You’ll get faster. Anything we do continually makes us faster and better. It’s like when you learn to drive, or start a new job. At first it seems hard and time-consuming, but the more you do it the better you get and the faster you can do things.
3. It creates a writing habit. When you do something every day, it soon becomes a habit so you can do it without even thinking about it. And habits, as we know, make our lives easier and effortless - or at least the good ones do.

If you want to write more, then it means more bum-in-chair time and there’s no getting away from that. There is no quick fix or cheat or secret way to do it.

On the plus side, writing more makes it faster and easier to do, plus you’ll get better with practice too.

And that is the secret to writing more.

Mission Critical For Life: Start Living Life On Your Terms By Pursuing Your True Life Mission

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/MCFL.html

My Writing Plans for 2022

So now it’s the end of 2021 and tomorrow is the first day of 2022.

I don’t know about you but I’ve got my writing plans in place for the next 12 months.

One thing I had to do was not only list everything I wanted to write, but also allot the time to do it. It’s no good saying what I want to do if I have no idea how I’m going to find the time.

So I did a plan of everything I want to write, and it includes books, ebooks, articles, blog posts and emails (amongst other things). I wanted to make sure I included everything so that nothing gets left out and I have enough time to do it all.

But it will still be a challenge with all that life throws up at us. Whenever I have a lot to do, the universe always throws up roadblocks and trip hazards.

But I’m determined to not let anything stop me completing my writing plan for 2022.

You can read it in it’s entirety at:

https://ruthiswriting.com/articles/2021/writing-plans-2022.html