Stephen King wrote in his book ‘On Writing’ that he has a daily 2,000 word quota. Which is nice if you’re home every day! 14,000 words a week sounds stellar, but in reality such an amount would be exhausting if not totally improbable for me to do.
My quota for my first novel was 4000 words per week. It worked out well for the most part, with some bad weeks mixed in with a 10,000 week of vacation and a 7500 final week.
Since I have more experience under my belt, I decided to raise it to 5000 wpw for my second novel. On top of a full time job, I felt that was an entirely feasible amount. Sure, I could probably do more if I was really desperate to finish. But (a) I’m a medium paced writer and (b) that would most likely lead to burnout.
As it turns out, I’m at 25,000 words right now, but am 8,000 words behind the pace (because of a few bad weeks). So it looks like sometime in the next two months, I’m going to have to pull that 14,000 word week out of my ass, if I am to finish by my goal date of June 6.
Reality is without a sense of irony, eh?