It’s here. And it’s been here for a while. The dreaded slump. The period when nothing, but nothing gets done. Those days when you wonder how you ever managed to write anything of consequence. The hours you spend diligently logging on to your computer, or opening your notebook. And the words. Just. Don't. Come. So you sit there, paralyzed, but resolute to keep at it, until finally, you give in and walk away in a huff.
Every writer knows this cursed state. And every writer has their own particular kind of juju to get out of it. Some switch around the time of day they write, morning to evening and vice verse. Some change the location, heading for nearby coffee shops, or bunkering down in unused corners in their own homes. Many of us go back to the mother lode, the source of all inspiration - the books that we have grown to love and that we read over and over again like talismans to ward off the evil of writer’s block.
And after a while, once the magic does its thing, the words start to come again, a drop at a time building into a trickle. It takes a while for the trickle to build into a full fledged flow, but somehow, it does, and then suddenly, you’re soaring high, the incapacitation merely an unpleasant memory. It’s unpleasant enough to make you want to sacrifice your first born to ensure that it never happens again. And so you solemnly swear, nevermore. You will never let another day go by without putting pen to paper.
Enter the word count. Writers everywhere swear by the potency of this little covenant you enter into with yourself. Words have power, we all know that, and a specific number of words every day has the power to keep you out of the murkiness of writer’s block for good. The whole premise of NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month hinges on being able to churn out the required 1667 words per day to complete a novel length 50000 word project in a month.
And that’s not all. The practice of putting down a requisite number of words on paper every day provides a sense of accomplishment and achievement. Your progress, such as it is, is quantifiable, as is your dedication to the craft. You have shown up, and in this world filled with distractions singing their siren songs to you, that is no small thing.
Arthur Hailey said, “I set myself 600 words a day as a minimum output, regardless of the weather, my state of mind, or if I’m sick or well. I write 600 at the top of my pad every day, and I keep track of the word count to insure I reach my quota daily - without fail.”
And he’s not alone. Stephen King has famously declared his proclivity of not getting up from his chair till he finishes his 2000 words per day regimen. Hemingway and Nabokov were more circumspect with the number; their daily word count was often measured in the low hundreds, but what beautiful words they were, not one more and less than what was needed.
I find another incidental benefit in the way a word count manages to make a seemingly overwhelming project easier to handle. Much easier to think of writing a few hundred or thousand words that will, drop by drop, coalesce into a longer work, rather than thinking of the big picture, which can be paralyzing owing to its immensity and seeming infinity. There have been many times I’ve just told myself to write just the next five hundred words, and see where something is going, and this has got me out of many debilitating moments and allowed me to plow on.
The author Daniel Pink says, “I think people who have giant projects hanging over their heads, and they can’t get in the flow, they're blocked. A lot of it is because they don't have a daily writing exercise. Like any kind of exercise, if you're not limber enough, it’s going to feel like you don't even know how to do it.”
But are all words good words? The author Karen Russell says, “For me, time spent inside a fictional world tends to be a better measure of a productive writing day. I can produce a lot of words, but volume is not the best metric for me. It’s more a question of, did I write for four or five hours of focused time? Was I able to stay put and commit to putting words on the page, without deciding mid-sentence that it’s more important to check my email, or research something online, or clean out my freezer? Showing up and staying present is a good writing day.”
The naysayers would have you believe that chasing a word count devolves quickly into writing words, just about any words that fulfill the quota. It’s the quantity that counts and not the quality. What is the point, they argue, of chugging out two thousand words when you eventually have to throw away eighteen hundred of them?
To which the aficionados might retort - “that’s two hundred more than you started with”. And they’re not wrong. Every word counts, and even the bad words have a role to play, in that they pave the way for the good ones to follow. The process has been likened to flushing the pipes - you have to let it run and let the bad stuff out so the good stuff can flow. And the stream of consciousness writing that can often happen, especially when you are unsure about what to write or how to approach an idea, can be mined for those diamonds in the rough that will let you see the way through. Moreover, it has the added benefit of silencing your inner editor. You are so focussed on getting the words out that you avoid the customary criticism that would hamper the momentum. This is golden at the first draft stage, and especially effective when you have a deadline looming.
For all the good that can be and is said about creating a word count based writing habit, there are some obvious drawbacks one cannot ignore. As habits go, it is hard to sustain, and hence a realistic count is more achievable than an ambitious one. There will be those days when writing will just have to step to the back of the line, as the rest of life takes precedence, and the resultant guilt at not getting in your quota for the day has proved to be even more debilitating for some writers. For this reason, some writers prefer a weekly word count, rather than a daily one, as it gives them more flexibility in managing their time and productivity.
The word count chase also does not take into the account what is perhaps the most important part of the process - editing and rewriting. Writing, above all, is rewriting; this is where the magic truly happens, where the misshapen, amorphous coagulation of words is hammered into a thing of beauty and resonance.
As with everything else to do with this creative endeavor, there is no one size fits all. Some swear by the discipline a word count regimen promotes, others decry its efficacy. There are those like the author Greg Iles who says, “Writing is a much more passive thing than people think it is. Words to a page is like a bag of tools. The real work is done passively, in your mind, deep in you when you're doing other things. I try to go as much of the year as I can without writing anything, and the story is working itself out. It’s like one day, you're a pregnant woman and your water breaks. Then I haul butt to get to my computer and I start.”
For me personally, I find word counts useful to kickstart my writing habit if I’ve fallen off the wagon and am finding it difficult to conquer the resultant inertia. Just doing a set number of words everyday gets me back into the rhythm and also gives me the mental boost I need to get out of the blue funk that not being productive results in. After I get over than initial hump, I allow the story to carry me forward. It is in the telling of the tale that I find the satisfaction and the motivation to move on. And if that is not working, if I am somehow not excited to continue, it signals to me that there is something wrong with the story itself, and it’s time to go back to the beginning and re-assess the whole project.
This may not be what works for everyone. But we owe it to ourselves as writers, to find in this, as we do for the other elements of our craft, what works best for us, and more importantly, what works best for the work.