Writing a lot, concisely

How do you balance hitting word count goals with writing tight, concise prose?

When I coach writers, we begin by setting a word goal for each month. The idea is to get a certain number of words of rough draft onto the page each day, week, or month.

I just finished a leading a six-month writers’ group—where everyone in the group made significant progress on completing a rough draft of their book. Each month, we’d gather for a training session on writing fundamentals, and members would turn in a word chunk of up to 10,000 words. I’d review their writing, offering coaching and encouragement.(We’ll start another in January if you’re interested—this link describes the group in detail. Click here to send me a note if you want to be notified when registration opens.)

Members set goals for the number of words they would write each month for six months. The average non-fiction book is about 50,000 to 70,000 words. Memoirs fall into about the same range, maybe 40,000 to 60,000. Novels are often a bit longer, up to 100,000 words or even more.

Several group members were surprised at how long a book really is, and how many words they needed to write to create a rough draft. And how hard it is to write 10,000 words without repeating yourself.

It’s a matter of math. If you write a thousand words a day (which is doable if you really dedicate yourself to it), five days a week, you’ll have a rough draft in about ten weeks. If you’re in the groove and have uninterrupted time, you can write 1000 words in an hour or two.

Like any aspiration, writing requires us to break down our big goals into smaller pieces, doable steps. And then, to actually move, one step at a time, until we get to where we want to go.

If you have a demanding day job, like many in my writers’ group, you might set a monthly goal of 10,000 words per month. That’s 2500 words per week. If you write five days a week, that’s just 500 words per day. (For comparison, this newsletter is about 1000 words.) Or, you could set aside a few hours over the weekend to pound out 2500 words. Still ambitious, but you’ll have a rough draft of your book in about six months.

Not a finished book. A finished draft. Which would be ready for several rounds of edits, which would likely make it shorter. (Or could make it longer, if you have to add more detail or explore ideas more fully.)

If you start with a solid outline, you can take each chapter or section in the outline and see it as a short assignment. Just write about that topic, as if you were writing a blog post or short article.

Now, if you’re trying to get a lot of words down, you might be tempted to be wordy. To embellish where embellishment is not needed, to use extra words just to hit that goal. One group member said she “expanded” her writing to hit the word count goals, which went against her training as a writer to be concise. Like many writers, she mistook writing a lot of words for giving up on good writing.

What you want is to write concisely and clearly, without verbosity or needless words, but still write a lot. Pages and pages of well-written content. You want lots of detail without being wordy.

Don’t write like Lucy Van Pelt did in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown:

“Peter Rabbit is stupid book about a stupid rabbit who steals vegetables from other people’s gardens…”

Walk the line: get your ideas down without self-criticism, but don’t pad your writing with flowery language or ideas and words you know you really don’t want. Don’t add “stupid” (literally or figuratively) to increase your word count.

Rather than focusing on trying to write long, focus on fully exploring your ideas. On showing, rather than telling, with dialog and vivid description. Go off on tangents if you like, knowing those tangents might become sections you can break off and move to another part of your book later.

 Rather than obsessively checking that word count, set a timer and write for 50 minutes. Then, take a ten-minute break. Walk away, stretch, drink some water. Make some tea. Look at something other than a screen, or just close your eyes and meditate for a few minutes. Then come back and set that 50-minute timer to write again. Don’t try to be wordy or write overly long descriptions. Just write. Include details, even in non-fiction: sights, smells, sounds.

After two or three 50-minute stints, look at your word count. Did you hit your goal?

Great. Hit save (you should be hitting save repeatedly as you write). Then leave it until the next day. Repeat the process the next day. (Or the next time you’ve set aside to write).

If you’re still short of your daily goal, you can either try to write more, or—hit save and come back to it the next day.

After a week or two, you probably have a chapter. Now, go back through and gently self-edit. If you root out the passive voice and search for overuse of “was” and “were” (two key self-editing hacks), your manuscript word count will go down. That’s okay. A rough draft should be longer than the finished chapter. Good writing becomes concise when we self-edit.

I know writers who don’t even begin the self-editing process until they get a 50,000 word draft of their entire book completed. Self-editing is essential, but it slows you down. I prefer to finish good sized chunks, then do a preliminary self-edit where I might find content that I can build on for my next chunk of writing.

Writers often get stuck when they aim for perfection on the first draft. Let that first draft be flabby and ungainly, with ideas sticking out all over the place. Let it be awkward and unpolished. Know that your book will be written, rewritten, edited, and edited again. Allow your rough draft to be rough.

But don’t put words in just to pad it. Don’t be purposely verbose. Hold the tension of quality and quantity in your fingertips as you write.

The next session of the Powerful Story Writers’ Group will begin in January. If you have a manuscript you’re working on, or that you’ve been meaning to work on, this group provides writing instruction and accountability to help you finish your rough draft in six months.

Be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss any details. Registration will open in October, and only a limited number of writers will be accepted. But maybe your next step is to actually write the book you’ve been thinking about. Or the one you’ve started a dozen times. Click here to send me a note if you’re interested in hearing more about the January writers group. Not sure? Here’s a blog post from the archives describing the 2023 group. While we’ll make some updates and improvements, the 2024 group will be similar.