How to set a daily word count goal you will actually keep

The formula

A daily word goal is not a test of willpower. It is arithmetic:

Most people set the goal the other way around. They pick a number that sounds serious, often 1,000 or 2,000 words, then try to find the time to hit it. That works for a week. Then a client emergency eats two mornings, the number feels impossible, and the book goes back in the drawer.

Working from the time you really have, and the pace you really write at, gives you a goal you can keep on an ordinary Tuesday. That is the goal that finishes books.

Step 1: find the time you can protect

Look at your last two normal weeks, not an ideal week. Where was there a block of 30 to 60 minutes that you could have had to yourself? Early morning before the house wakes up, the first hour at the office before email, a lunch break, the hour after the kids are in bed.

The Scribe Method's chapter on creating a writing plan recommends at least one hour a day, and 30 minutes if an hour is not possible. It calls two to three hours ideal but says consistency matters more than the length of each session. For most busy professionals, 30 to 60 minutes is the honest number.

Pick one block and treat it like a meeting with a client. If the time changes from day to day, the goal will not hold. The guide on building a writing routine around a full-time job covers how to choose the time and protect it.

Step 2: measure your pace on day 1

The same chapter of The Scribe Method uses 250 words an hour as a simple target, about one book page. That is a sensible planning number, and it is deliberately modest. Your pace may be faster or slower. The only way to know is to measure it.

Day 1 of the challenge is built for this. Here is the test:

Two notes on the result. First, rough drafting with no editing is usually faster than the writing most professionals do at work, where every email gets reread before it is sent. Second, your pace on a hard chapter will be slower than your pace on a story you have told a dozen times. Plan on your average, not your best day.

Step 3: do the math

Multiply your protected minutes by your measured pace, then round down. Here is how that works at a few common combinations. The 250-words-an-hour row is The Scribe Method's planning pace. The other rows are examples to show the arithmetic.

A worked example

This is an example we wrote to show the method. Dana runs a 12-person consulting firm. She can protect 45 minutes from 6:15 to 7:00 each weekday morning. On day 1 she writes 290 words in 30 minutes, on day 2 she writes 230. Her average is 260 words per 30 minutes, or 520 an hour.

Forty-five minutes at 520 words an hour is 390 words. She rounds down and sets her goal at 350. She sets her daily goal to 350 in the tracker. On the challenge's lighter days, which ask for 300, she writes 300 and stops.

Over 30 days, that is a little under 10,000 words. That is less than the challenge's default plan, and that is fine. It is 10,000 words she will actually write.

Why this challenge defaults to 500 words

The prompts on this site ask for 500 words on a full drafting day and 300 on lighter days and in week 1. If you hit every target, the 30 days add up to 12,000 words. If you wrote 500 every single day, it would be 15,000.

We chose 500 because it is a round number that many people can reach in a focused hour, and because it produces enough words in a month to feel like a real start on a book. It is a default, not a rule. At The Scribe Method's 250 words an hour, 500 words is a two-hour day, which is more than many professionals can give. If that is you, lower the target. A smaller number you hit every day is worth more than a big one you miss.

The minimum viable day

Your daily goal is for normal days. You also need a number for bad days: travel, a sick child, a deal closing at midnight. We call it the minimum viable day.

Set it at about a fifth of your daily goal, or 100 words, whichever is smaller. On a bad day, open the document, write that many words toward today's prompt and close it. Log it. The day counts.

The minimum exists to protect the habit, not the word count. Missing a day is not a disaster, but missing two in a row makes the third much easier to miss. One hundred words takes five or ten minutes and keeps you in contact with the book. Most people, once they start, write more than the minimum. If you do not, that is fine too.

When to change your goal

Review your numbers at the end of each week, not each day. One bad day tells you nothing. A week of data tells you a lot.

• You hit the goal easily every day for a week. Raise it by about 10 to 20 percent, not more. Bigger jumps tend to break the streak.
• You missed the goal on most days but hit the minimum. Lower the goal to what you actually averaged. The habit is working. The number is wrong.
• You missed several days entirely. The problem is usually time, not pace. Look at when you are trying to write before you change the number. The guide on what to do when you miss a day covers how to restart.
• Your pace dropped on a hard chapter. That is normal. Keep the goal and accept a slower week, or lower it for that chapter only.

Mistakes to avoid

• Counting words you deleted. If you rewrote the same paragraph four times, count the paragraph once. Better still, stop rewriting during the draft.
• Banking words. Writing 1,500 words on Saturday so you can skip Monday to Wednesday breaks the habit. Write the extra on Saturday if you are in flow, but still show up on Monday.
• Doubling up after a missed day. Never try to make up a missed day by writing twice as much the next day. It turns one missed day into a dreaded day, which often turns into more missed days.
• Setting the goal from someone else's numbers. A famous author's 2,000 words a day says nothing about your calendar or your pace. Your numbers are the only ones that matter.

Putting it into the tracker

The challenge tracker lets you set your own daily goal and change it any time. Your progress is kept only in your browser, with no account. Log your words at the end of each session, including minimum days. After a week, the numbers will tell you whether your goal is right.