Numbers, words, and the importance of psyching oneself out

I am the sort of person who is motivated by numerical goals. For instance, a few years ago I got into running. Each mile equalled Y laps around the little track at my gym. I’d count the laps and use the count to psych myself into going a little further. I was able to run more at the gross, dingy gym than outside along the beach, because of the weird way in which numbers are motivating to me.

I’m finding it’s the same with writing, and what I call BookMath™, which works like this: a typical novel has 80,000-100,000 words; I expect mine to come out at the upper end of that range because of its complexity and multiple POVs (2, at this point).

Every day while we’re here, I am trying to write 3,000 words. I’m not sure how I arrived at this number exactly, except that it seems to be the wordcount BELOW which I feel the itchy, irritable undercurrent that I didn’t write enough today dammit, which makes it hard to relax and have fun and sleep and so on. And ABOVE which, I feel bliss, success, accomplishment, boy I’m the greatest ever. And isn’t that a nice way to feel?

Some days, like the last 2 days, I have written 5,000 words – whoo! Other days, like last Sunday, after we’d been out at a nightclub with our Argentine friends until 7:30AM…nada. So far, I’ve written about 40,000 words in 2 weeks – which is almost half of my novel. Or at least half of a draft of my novel, which then will of course need editing. And I have to say, I’m feeling pretty damn skippy about that!

The big question, about which I’m trying not to think: Can I finish a complete draft at that pace, say, by January? If I can, it will be the first time that I’ve actually completed a draft versus gotten stuck somewhere in the middle and become suddenly obsessed with playing Yahoo downloadable games about running a car wash or pet store or fashion boutique (anyone else out there love those, too?) So I’m not thinking about the end goal, I’m just thinking 3,000 words a day.

My Addiction

I am also trying not to go back and tweak as I write but just make like Lee Nails and press on, with the idea that I can and will sort through the details later.

Comments

[Mokandi Melrose]

My whole damn life I thought I was some sort of weird freak because almost every thing I do has to do with numbers. I realized later in life that my father lived his life in the same manner. Genetics are sooo strange. I'm not even great at math. I just can't accomplish anything without reaching some sort of number. I haven't figured out how I determine that crazy number that gets me to where I am going (or not) and if I ever do will that be the end of the game??? Miss you both. You bright up this mountain town.

[Lucia]

Shit girl. By your standards i am an underachiever for REAL. I too gave myself a daily number, but only of 1500 - 2000 words. Of course, I arrived at this count when I was holding a day job, coming home each night after spending the day writing. Eeesh. HOWEVER. When I became un(der)employed this year, I stuck to that number. The thought that never occurred to me was, "Hey, you got more bandwidth, up the number, bitch." Thanks for inspiring me to bake up more goodies, fresh daily.