Now I know that I’ve been complaining a lot recently about the poor state of the amateur writer and while that’s certainly valid, after all, if the goal is to help people to become better writers, correcting their misconceptions and pointing out their foibles is essential, but I wanted to do something a bit more positive today.

So this is how I write a book and where I’m at right now. Hope it helps.

Now I know that there are people who are going to get mad at this because, unfortunately, there are lots of writers who will look at someone else’s successes and proclaim, often quite stridently, that it can’t be true because they, themselves, are not capable. That’s one of the many misconceptions that people need to get over.

Otherwise, they will assert that the successful writer is just “showing off” by reporting their successes. If others are not at your level or below, it’s somehow a bad thing. It’s also silly because I don’t look at Stephen King and get upset that he’s successful. I don’t look at other writers who can write far faster than I can and complain. It’s not a competition and I’m happy for the successes that I see in others and hopefully, they’re happy that I’m successful. Seeing that someone else can do more than you gives you more confidence that you can do better yourself. I remember looking at a lot of vocal writers back in the day and thinking “if they can do that, so can I!”

That’s all I’ve ever done in offering my successes and trying to help others but a lot of people are intensely jealous and would rather watch others fail than see them succeed and improve. That’s kind of sad.

So this post isn’t about me showing off. This isn’t about me trying to make anyone feel bad. This is about providing my process and giving some tangible results. You can reach the point that I’m at if you just set your mind to it. I’m certainly not planning on stopping at this point. I’m trying hard to improve too.

As I’ve said before, I get up at 5 am every weekday morning and get to work. I have a limited amount of time before I have to leave the house and that’s my time to write. My goal is to write a minimum of 5,000 words a day, although I almost always do more. That is a goal that has gone up and down over the years and I think it’s important for people to be continually pushing themselves to go farther, write faster and create better. I am never satisfied with where I am. I am constantly striving to improve.

On average, at least at the moment, I can write about 2000 words per hour. Obviously, that’s a very round figure but I’ve found that I update my word count tracker every 500 words or so and I do so about every fifteen minutes so it averages out. In the three to three and a half hours that I have every morning, that means I can get 5000-7000 words down, more or less. I do have to do things like eat, shower and see my wife off to work in the morning, but mostly I’m sitting at the keyboard, pounding away pretty consistently.

I’ve had people ask me what my word tracker looks like, so here’s my current progress on my current book, from today. As I write this, this is exactly how many words I have down, close to 58k out of what I estimate will be a 110-115k book. This is in 9 days of official writing.

Now, knowing as I do the kind of things I see all the time, sure, anyone can just make up a form and have it say anything that you want it to, but here’s my totals from Scrivener that confirm  that total.

Pay attention to the “selection” bit at the bottom, the part on the top includes notes and revisions I’ve added during the day and that will be slightly higher. I only count what I call “finished words”. It’s things that, at least at this juncture, I figure are going to wind up in the finished product. Sure, that  can change in revision, but I always underwrite, never over. I can change things, I can add things but I don’t delete wholesale.

Also note that all of my numbers agree on my tracker. The word count in the upper left corner matches the total number of words in the chapters combined. I’m also giving myself an idea of how much I still have to go by counting down to 100k. Yes, my book will have more than that and in that, the number on the right, the number of days expected to hit 100k if I do 5k a day, that will go into the negative but this is just a guideline. I know virtually all of my books will surpass 100k which is why I use that figure.

Please note on the right that I’m tracking per chapter counts and page counts, as reported by Scrivener. The words in the chapters has to match the words overall. At the bottom of the right section, I’m also tracking what the overall page count would be, just dividing total words by 275, which is the average number of words per page per Amazon.  The second column, that’s always  going to be higher because, as you skip to a new chapter in a book, you also skip to a new page so there are additional pages mixed in. It’s not an exact science but it does give me some idea of where I’m at.

That brings us to my goals. I have multiple goals when I write and I am constantly adding more to keep pushing me ahead. I always hit 5k, which is the numbers in the second column on the left. Because I always write more than 5k though, I sometimes jump an increment. That’s really there to push me to write more. I make my weekly goals on Monday morning and I will just guess that I can skip an increment and go further and I make sure I hit that every single time. If I set a goal, I don’t miss it unless something serious goes wrong. The last book I wrote, the first one in this series, I had a couple of days where things went sideways and one day where I missed my goal entirely. I punish myself for that. I don’t make excuses.

I give myself 20 days to write a book. That’s four weeks, without weekends. I do not write on weekends or holidays and I don’t give myself excuses for holidays either. I know that I won’t be writing on Thanksgiving. I still have to make up that 5k during the week. I don’t cut myself any slack. This is a job and I treat it as such. For this book, it will be done, at the absolute latest, by November 12. I’m not going to allow myself to fail.

Now people might look at this stuff and say “that’s too hard!” Sure, it  can be, it depends on how serious you take it. I’ve been writing and developing my systems for close to 40 years. Now things change all the time. I add things all the time. I don’t think there’s a book that I’ve written where I haven’t tried to tweak something, somewhere. It’s a constant cycle of improvement and the more you do it, the more you push  yourself, the better you get.

I couldn’t have done this five years ago. There was no way I could do what I’m doing now just a few years ago. My daily word goal used to be 2k. Now it’s 5k. In another 5 years, it might be 7.5k, I don’t know. As I think I can move forward and perform, I do and then I hold myself accountable for it and I don’t want to fail. There was a time I wrote one book a year if I was lucky. This year, for the first time ever, I’m going to complete 8 and if my math holds true, I should exceed a million finished words this year.

That’s kind of cool.

None of this is meant to make anyone else feel bad because I firmly believe that if you’re willing to put your mind to it and if you’re dedicated to setting and exceeding goals over the long haul, you can do it too. It’s about continually becoming more efficient. It’s about getting faster and making fewer mistakes up front. It’s about training your brain to be creative on demand. Whatever systems that you need to put in place to help you grow, do it. It’s always going to be a work in progress and if what you’re doing isn’t working the way that you want, change it. Be open to altering your path. Make goals and push through until you achieve them and have realistic expectations along the way. There’s no way that I could have jumped from 2k to 5k a day in one go. I’d have failed. So I took some intermediary steps until I was confident that I could move ahead and there’s never a point at which I’ll stop pushing myself. I’ve never hit 8 books in a year before. Sooner or later, I’ll hit 10. You can do it too if you try, I know that you can.

Because showing people that it’s possible, that’s what this is all about. It’s not about showing off, it’s about encouraging improvement. Get out there and work your tail off. I bet, with a little elbow grease and a lot of dedication, you can do it too.