So You Didn’t Hit Your Word Count… Did You Have Fun?

Sometimes we don’t reach our word count goal. And that’s okay! Longtime NaNo participant Michael Chatfield has a few words of advice on how the most important part of writing is the journey itself.

There’s a regular responses to missing your word count—“I’ll just increase how much I write tomorrow, I’ll spread it over the remaining days!”

If that works for you—go for it!

If that doesn’t and you’re starting to beat yourself up about not hitting those numerical milestones and your obstacles are starting to look like blockades, this might be for you. My limited nuggets of wisdom I can give you on the all fearing word count.

I’m going to talk a little about passion, some about joy and a lot about how while numbers are great—they are not the be all-end all of writing. Showing up, getting lost in your world, exploring it everyday and putting in the time is the win. Sometimes that results in words, we hope, but sometimes that means we don’t hit the numbers we want to.

Many times when we don’t hit that all important word count, there comes a sinking feeling. You may say to yourself something like —“I’m slipping”, “I’m behind”, “It’s going to be so hard to catch up”, “I’m failing!”. These are all a variation of “I didn’t get x words today so I’m losing”.

Woah—wait, you’re losing? You’re falling behind? Let me steal some words and heavily paraphrase what I heard fellow writer Elana Johnson say. Writing is like climbing a mountain, we’re each going up it on our own path in our own way. When we take a pause we feel like we’re slipping down the mountain. That’s just plain ridiculous, you climbed up to this point.

You’re HERE!

Take a look around. Your love for an idea, for a group of characters has led to this point. Draw from the excitement, that passion that got you here.

Get excited by that next scene that’s bursting to come forward, that next juicy tidbit you see ahead that opens a pit in your stomach, or fills it with butterflies!

Are you chasing numbers, or are you chasing those feelings, those scenes and parts that send a thrill through your mind and out into the world?

Ground yourself in where you are, just like a trek up a mountain, rarely do you do it in one damn bound.

You walk, take a break, take in the view, study the path behind, the path ahead.

Maybe you want to be at a higher place than where you are right now.

Okay, totally fine, hell maybe you want to charge all the way up to that next lookout perch.

Or maybe you didn’t move at all, you just took in the view.

That’s totally fine too, you didn’t start falling off it (base jumping is a whole different exercise).

Here’s a couple of thoughts/rut busters to think of:

If you’re stuck on something you need to do but having such a damn hell of a time doing it: Write a note. Dump all the information you have on this part. Now move onto the next thing after this.

When you have momentum use it, when you start seeing a scene coming together, start writing on it.

Write how you want to write. Some go from beginning to end, some write in chunks and fill it in, some use pen, keyboard or speech. Others hangout with friends, discuss a topic and write it all down. How do you want to record your stories? Do that. If you don’t know, then explore! Try out the most romantically writerly things you can think of like writing in calligraphy, on a typewriter, or with a cup of something. Picture how you think an author writes, try it out.

Writing your thoughts out can be a great help and allow you to go from writing out where the story is going to putting down the words that will get it there. Give thinking and thoughts space too. We often think it a waste of time or “doing nothing”.

I heard this from Neil Gaiman first and several other writers since. When writing, I can write or do nothing. Give writing the time it deserves and fully devote yourself to enjoying that time. Sometimes doing nothing is amazing. It’s known to cause thinking and boredom, which has been linked to increased creativity and energy.

You decide if you win or lose. If you show up, write, think, and be bored, you’ll honestly be surprised with the results. You win by living in your passion, you win by having fun. Don’t try to define failure, recognize when you’re having fun instead.

After all, writing is the author’s adventure.

Have fun,

Michael Chatfield

(Like all advice, it is only as useful as you find it. If this doesn’t gel with you, don’t worry, this wasn’t for you, there might be other advice that helps! Writing is your journey, find the information that works for you.)

Michael Chatfield is an international bestseller who likes to create character-driven stories set in fact-paced worlds. His main genres are Fantasy, Science Fiction, and LitRPG, but he enjoys adding enough realism to make the stories leap off the page.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash