Daily Word Count of Famous Writers

What is a word count?

A word count is the length of a literary piece, whether it is an article, novel, poem, or even sales letter. From a professional writer’s perspective, the word count is a clear sign that you have been busy for the day. However, you should remember that not all writers have the same word count.

Does it really matter?

Word counts help in gauging the progress of an author in that they indicate how much of an effort was added to the manuscript. The best authors do not stop writing. In fact, it is a must for writers to write continuously, and having a target word count for a day helps in improving their writing skills and styles.

Without a set word count for yourself, you won’t really know whether you were able to make any progress in your writing projects.

How do you stay consistent with your word count?

When it comes to staying consistent with your word count, the most important thing you should have is discipline. Writing will always be a difficult activity. It takes a lot of work, and writing could feel like you are squeezing every bit of imagination from your brain.

It also takes a lot of preparation in order to do it properly. It is difficult to just sit down and start writing out of the blue. You will need to do some research and double-check them.

It is also important that you create an outline of your work. By doing so, you will have a blueprint that you could follow throughout the writing process.

How much should your daily word count be?

If you are going to set a daily word count for yourself, there are two factors that you should take into account— your ability, and patience.

Remember that writing is not just scribbling words on a piece of paper. It involves a lot of brainpower in order to do it properly. Now the main question arises.

How many should your daily word count be? It all really depends on you.

Some writers could eke out 10000 words a day, while some are very meticulous, and could only write a thousand at best. You will also need to be patient because writing is very meticulous work.

If you lack patience, it is very easy to consider writing as tedious and just quit outright.

10 Daily Word Counts of Famous Writers

If you want to gauge your word count, you should check out the word counts of established writers. Here are the ten daily word counts of famous writers.

Anne Rice

3000 words- I plunge into the work and write an episode; I can't just clock in at 3,000 words. I have to have time free to resolve things. I write in episodic ways. But when I'm ready to plunge in, I write from late morning through all afternoon, all evening.

Stephen King

2000 words- If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

Arthur Conan Doyle

3000 words- As to my hours of work, when I am keen on a book I am prepared to work all day, with an hour or two of walk or siesta in the afternoon…Twice I have written forty-thousand-word pamphlets in a week, but in each case I was sustained by a burning indignation, which is the best of all driving power.

Mark Twain

1400 words-To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

Michael Crichton

10000 words-Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

Ernest Hemingway

500 words- I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Jack London

1500 words- You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Lee Child

1800 words- I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until ‘The End.

Nicholas Sparks

2000 words-Writing is hard. Writing well is hard. Writing under deadline is just misery at its most horrible.

Grahame Greene

500 words-Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

daily word count of famous writers

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