During the months of Jan - Mar 2002, I set a goal of writing at least 5000 words daily of something. What I did was chart my daily word count, then averaged it out on a sliding window of 7 days. What I found was that I couldn’t always reach 5000 words, and not all of it was usable for fiction. But on the best days, I reached 12,000 words, 3,000 of which would be fiction. A lot of the remaining text could be used for purposes such as this posting - in the future.

Essentially, the creativity curve fluctuates. It’s really not unusual, as it has long ago been shown that humans have three biorhythm curves. One of these is gauges creativity (emotion) in an undulating sine curve of 28 days. Unfortunately, the physical curve is 23 days and the intellectual curve is 33 days.

What I’ve found, from over a decade of writing short fiction (just for myself), is that excellent writing requires a peak day from all three cycles. Since that only happens one or two days per month, you have to make the best of it the rest of the time. That means setting whatever goals you are comfortable with, and doing the writing activities that feel right to you on a given day. For example, some days I only feel like doing character sketches or recording what I observed of two people on the bus. On low days of the emotional curve, I make up fake book reviews of my works-in-progress, as if it were already some future day and reviewers love my work. At the worst, this latter activity gives me a bit of amusement.

When setting your own daily quotas, keep one thing in mind. Start small, then build up. When I started setting my daily quota at 5,000 words, I managed to crack 10,000-word days than when my quota was 3,000 words. But I had to work up to it. I couldn’t get much further than that because I had to work weird shifts. Also, once I let things slip, I had to work my quota levels back up from scratch. It takes 30 days to form a habit, good or bad. Unless you’re dedicated, have a financially-supportive spouse, or independently wealthy and don’t have to work, you will probably find your quota level fluctuating throughout your career.

Ultimately, it isn’t just about the number of words you write daily. If there’s no quality in your writing, then it’s only a therapeutic exercise, if that. You may or may not end up using all of your fiction. But even if you don’t, it’s not wasted effort because you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.

(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://talespinner.countwordula.com