For the last month or so, I’ve been keeping track of my daily writing habits to look for patterns that might give me some insight on how to improve my creative process. I’ve amassed somewhere around 65 data points, and I think the results are clear enough to notice some trends.
Just some preliminary background information: for most of this time, I’ve either been on vacation or at my parents’ house, waiting to start an English teaching job in another country. I haven’t had school or a full-time job, so my schedule has been pretty open and flexible. Also, the numbers track progress on the first drafts for Star Wanderers and Stars of Blood and Glory, and do not count revisions of any kind.
Here are the results:
The first graph plots word count by duration spent writing. As you can see, there’s a definite trend: the longer I write, the more I tend to write. No surprises there. Most writing sessions are somewhere between 45 and 90 minutes, or 500 and 1,500 words.
The second graph plots the average writing rate (in words per hour) per session by hours spent writing, and it’s a little bit murkier. In writing sessions of less than 45 minutes, I tend to average a little over 1000 words/hour, but things get murkier between 45 and 90 minutes, and after 90 minutes, I tend to be around 600 and 800 words/hour.
The overall trend appears to be down–that is, the longer I write, the slower I tend to write–but there appears to be a counter-trend, too, where if I start off slow I can increase the pace by writing for a longer amount of time. Is that true, or is that simply a sharper downward trend line?
I think it’s a genuine counter-trend, and here’s why:
This graph shows writing rate plotted against word count, and it pretty clearly shows two trend lines: one starting at 1,000 to 1,200 words/hour and going slightly down, the other starting at 400 to 600 words and going up. At about 1,500 total words, they converge at around 800 words/hour and appear to remain flat, though there isn’t really enough data to be able to say.
What I think this shows is that I have two different writing styles. The first is to start off slow and gradually write my way into the story, picking up the pace but never really going over 800 words/hour. The other is to start off at a sprint of 1,200 words/hour or so, but to slowly drop off to 800 words/hour at around 90 minutes or 1,500 words.
The next graph plots the total word count of each writing session by the time of day in which I started the session. Interestingly, there is no trend; the points are all over the map. This tells me that there is no “best time” for me to write. Other time-related factors might influence how much I can write, but time of day itself does not.
A quick glance at the next graph confirms this. It plots writing rate by time of day, and the results are much the same as the graph for word count. I tend to write at a more consistent pace in the afternoon–around 1,000 words/hour–but really, there is no consistent trend.
This tells me that my first session of the day tends to be slow and gradual, but that once I’ve written myself into the story, the writing comes a lot faster. In other words, if I wake up early and hit the ground running, I tend to write more and write faster throughout the day. If I get lazy and sleep in, the whole day tends to be shot.
The last two graphs plot word count and writing rate by date. Before January 3rd or so, I was either spending time with family or on the road / traveling cross-country by train. Even so, there wasn’t a whole lot of variation, though my writing rate converged around 800-1,000 words/hour for a while before fluctuating again.
What this tells me is that stability and momentum tend to lead to more consistency in my writing habits. If I’m constantly on the road, it becomes more challenging to keep up the pace. Even so, as long as I can find make at least 45 to 90 minutes to write, I can pound out about the same number of words per session.
So in conclusion, it seems that the best way to improve my writing habits and streamline my creative process would be to:
- Get up early and start the day writing.
- Write in short, condensed sessions of 45 to 90 minutes each, with periodic breaks in between.
- Don’t worry about time of day when planning time to write; just do it whenever time can be made available.
However, unless I can get to the point where I’m regularly averaging +1,000 words after two hours, it’s going to be really hard to put in 10k words or more per day. At 800 words/hour, it takes 12.5 hours to hit 10k, and after about four or five sessions at 1,000 words/hour, the well starts to dry up.
A much more practical goal, for now at least, would be to shoot for a consistent 5k words per day. The week before last, I hit about 5.5k on Monday, a little less than 4k on Tuesday and Wednesday, and back around 2.5k for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. My running 7-day total for the entire week was above 20k, which is pretty good, but if I could get to stay between 25k and 30k for some time, that would be an accomplishment.
I haven’t totally given up on hitting a 10k/day average, but at this point, it seems that I need to set some stepping stones first. 5k/day seems like a much better goal for now–especially since I don’t know how things are going to change once I’m traveling again. But at least I have a better idea of how my own process works. I expect I’ll be writing a lot more in the weeks and months to come!
That’s right–my travel journals from the 2008 study abroad to Jordan are now up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and almost everywhere else! Here’s a complete list:
