Welcome to Marketing for Romance Authors 52 week blog hop challenge.  Each week, a lovely group of romance authors blog on a common theme. Visit them all here.

A demanding work schedule has kept me from participating in the hop for a few weeks. I’m going combine last week’s theme (pet peeve) and this week’s theme (word counts matter) into a single post.  My pet peeve is the stifling belief that word counts matter. I personally find them an obstacle to writing, not an incentive.  It may simple be my writing style.  For me, writing is habit and discipline. Its showing up at the page on a regular schedule, so the muse is trained to visit at a pre-ordained time and place.  Sometimes I write lots, Sometimes I only write a little. Sometimes I only write only a line or two but crack a plotting dilemma or figure out how to deepen character.

iStock Credit: Anant_Kasetsinsombut

Word counts allow a writer to write a lot by driving prose forward.  That’s good. I get that. But its a structure that throws my life into torment.  I already wake up at 5:00 to write. I can’t stay up to midnight if I didn’t make word count. I do time. I do half an hour a day, and more on weekends. Not a lot, maybe. But as a single mother with a high demand job, its what I can carve out.  It works for me.

What about how? How have you had to take on one of those seemingly written in stone rules, and found a solution since that rule didn’t work for you?

 

 

 

 

6 Replies to “Word Counts Don’t Matter #MFRWauthor #amwriting”

  • Nodding, nodding… I went in a whole different direction with my post because I don’t think in terms of word-count in daily increments, either. I used to think in terms of scenes/chapters. Now I think in terms of time spent. You gotta do what works for you.

  • Holy smokes you wake up at 5am to write?!?! Nope, I couldn’t put a coherent thought together that time of morning.

    I do agree that word counts (for some) can be a hindrance. I can’t focus on how many words as I explained in my post today. I have to write as it comes to me and how it comes.

  • I think it’s individualized for every writer. I get up at 4:30 every day and still can’t get any words some days if I’m not disciplined. Otherwise life, and social media, emails etc- steal all my time.

  • 5:00, 4:30 a.m. — wow. I think you and I might be different species. Now, writing until 1:00 or 2:00 a.m., that I can understand; but the only coherent thought I can manage at your morning hours is “I need to go back to sleep.” 😉

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