I’m envious of those writers who regularly set a ridiculously high word count and regularly hit their target.
One thousand words. Two thousand words. Five thousand words!
On a good morning, I can crank out five hundred words.
Sometimes, I’m in a flow state and hit eight hundred to a thousand words before I need to attend to the business of the day.
Sometimes, I struggle to find the words, and produce one hundred to two hundred words before I gladly jump into my day.
I try to remember that I don’t need to compare my writing process to those of professional writers – authors who do this for a living.
I discovered the other day something that has helped me with my word count each day. It’s a very small trick that my daughter showed me, and it has helped improve my process.
Normally I would write, then highlight everything I wrote and click on word count to see how many words I have produced. My daughter pointed out a checkbox at the bottom of the word count tool that rocked my world. I’d never noticed it before.
But you can display the word count on the screen while you write. When you check off the box, the word count appears in the bottom left corner of the screen.
It has served as a powerful tool and motivator to help in my daily writing process. I know that it won’t change my ability to write like the literary giants and attain massive word counts.
But I also know that I don’t need to. I just need to write every day, and improve my own writing process.
After all, words count.
Words matter.
Rich