Searching for the Sweet Spot in Daily Word Count

My favourite function in Scrivener isn’t any of the fancy layout options, the scratch-pad that exists for eery scene, nor the ability to set up a useful list of metadata attached to any particular slice of a story.

I make use of many of those things, but the thing that keeps me coming back to the program is the function that tracks the daily word count needed to reach a particular deadline (and automatically re-calculates it, when a day goes better or worse than expected).

Which means, most mornings, I boot up my computer and load two trackers: one for my thesis, and one for the current creative project.

Generally, speaking, whatever number is on the session target is what needs to get written in order to tick off my “have written” log on a given day. My actual target is usually slightly higher, because I crave consistency in the hard-edges to my process: generally speaking, the first time I look up from my thesis and I’ve written over a hundred words, it’s time to stop working on it for the day. The same is true on a fiction project once my progress has cleared 1,666 words.

Both numbers are largely arbitrary, although they occupy a sweet spot between “easy to get” and “needing to push myself” that’s useful to me. Low enough that i don’t fret about hitting the word count, high enough that I need to allocate work hours in order to stand a chance. They give me an opportunity to do a little bit more than needed, edging the session targets down as the project continues.

I get to see the small impacts of working steadily, which gradually add up, without feeling like I’m leaving the keyboard with too little work done. Everything after those draft targets are met is admin, redrafting, writing up my project diary, and planning future projects.

Prior experience says I could probably push myself to write more than I do, try and set the daily average closer to 2,500 words or more. I’m purposefully trying to avoid that, so I finish each day feeling with something left in the tank and a rough edge waiting for me to come and finish off.