How many words a day should you write?

Ask ten writers and you will get ten numbers. Stephen King says two thousand. Graham Greene famously stopped at five hundred, mid-scene, and went to lunch. Both worked, which should tell you something: the number matters much less than whether you can hold it.

So here is a more useful question than “how many words a day?” — what is the largest number I could hit on a bad day?

Pick for your worst day, not your best

Most people choose a target while feeling optimistic. Sunday evening, coffee in hand, the week ahead looking manageable. Two thousand words a day sounds reasonable in that mood.

Wednesday does not care about that mood. You slept badly, work ran long, and now the target that felt ambitious feels accusatory. Skip one day and the number is no longer a plan, it is a debt. Skip three and most people quit — not because they cannot write, but because the streak is broken and starting over feels worse than not starting.

A target you can hit while tired, distracted, and slightly resentful is worth more than one you hit twice a week.

Small numbers are less small than they look

The arithmetic is unkind to marathons and generous to habits.

• 250 words a day — about one manuscript page — is 91,250 words in a year. That is a complete novel.
• 500 words a day is a novel by July.
• 100 words a day, which takes most people under ten minutes, still comes to 36,500 words. That is a novella you would not otherwise have.

None of those require a good week. They require an ordinary one, repeated.

Count time instead, if words fight you

Word counts have a failure mode: they punish the days when the work is thinking rather than typing. Rewriting a chapter can be a full day’s labour and a negative word count.

If that is the kind of work you are doing, set the goal in minutes. Thirty minutes of honest attention is a day you showed up, whatever the counter says. The point of a target is to get you into the chair — once you are there, it has done its job.

Then stop moving it

The most common mistake is not picking the wrong number. It is picking a reasonable number and then quietly raising it every time you have a good week, until the target only fits your best days again.

Pick something modest. Hold it for a month without adjusting. If it still feels easy after thirty consecutive days, then raise it — but only then, and only a little.

That is the whole method. A number small enough to survive a bad Wednesday, held long enough to become remarkable.