Stacey Farley on creating goals to write more each day and achieving dream word counts.
I’m a full-time writer who pens, you guessed it, 150% more than Stephen King, and that’s on a slow day. My secret? I'm always working on my craft. Producing more work in less time means I can have more time for living and less time for working.
I write romance novels under a pen name, and I am breaking into writing dystopian fiction in 2019 under my own name. My romance novels run at between 45,000-60,000 words, which is about as long as the Harlequin romance novels, although mine are all independently published as I like having more creative control and a bigger royalty share than my trade published counterparts receive.
As part of my writerly research early on in my career, I read the great Stephen King’s book On Writing. In it, he talks about how he wrote 2,000 words per day, every day. So it’s simple I thought. Just write 2,000 words per day in addition to all the other work an indie author has to do that trade published authors don’t and I’m sweet. I’ll be like an indie published Stephen King in no time!
Image description: Stephen King and friend
But when I started, I couldn’t write 2,000 words per day. Some days I could barely write 200. I kept at it though, and picked up a side gig or two to keep me afloat financially while I got a handle on all the things one has to do to be an indie author in the 21st century. Over time I got up to 1000 words a day, then 1500, then 2000. Some days I would overshoot 2000 and feel chuffed with myself.
In the tail part of 2018 though, what had been an incredibly stressful year caught up on me all at once. I found that I couldn’t write that 2000 words a day. I couldn’t even write 200. I was back to where I had been at the start of my journey as a writer and that wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t writing anything and my income from royalties was plummeting.
Rather than run for cover though, or get a regular day job like many around me were pushing for, I learned a few things about myself to up my productivity. This time around though, I wanted more than 2000 words per day. No, this time I would do better. I now write 5,000 words per day on a slow day, which is 150% more than what the great Stephen King writes. Here are the six things I did to really kick it up a notch, and give my writing career a good push-start for 2019.
Goal Setting
I have an income goal going forward, something I haven’t had at any time in my writing career. I want to earn x amount of dollars every month to reach my overall goal for the year and maintain my lifestyle while putting money away for the future.
Having an overall goal helps, because I am not just sitting in my study penning words for solely creative reasons anymore, I am penning them to hit a goal which will have real world consequences. Like Neil Gaiman who says his writing prompt when he was a young writer was keeping himself out of poverty, only my writing prompt is setting myself up for long-term success and financial comfort.
Self-Care
Some days I really don’t want to get out of bed. Maybe I am sick, or tired, maybe I am avoiding something - like the pile of work on my desk - but I don’t give myself days off anymore. I don’t need time off because I am the one in control of everything. If I have set too many high targets for myself, then I will give myself rewards for hitting them, or will give myself a little more TLC than I know most bosses would bother with to avoid burning myself out.
For me, self-care can be half a day of working then half a day at a museum for inspiration. It can be painting my nails, time with friends, or even a pint in the sunshine with a cutie (okay, this is a personal favourite, hands down!). Working all the time doesn’t do anything but burn you out. Sometimes to keep your eye on the prize, you have to chill out a bit and give yourself what you need.
Story Planning
There’s been plenty written about the four act structure used by Hollywood. So much so, that once you start writing with it in mind then the more you’ll see it everywhere. When I watch movies now, even for the first time, I know how long they have left based on whether we’re at the first plot point (25% through), the mid-point (50% through) or the second plot point (75% through).
Some people plan every scene, every chapter, but I tend to just know what the big plot points are when I start, and which beats I have to hit through the story, and that’s enough to keep the writing momentum up and stop blocks from happening. Writing blocks eat up creative energy and waste time, so I won’t let them take root.
It’s A Writing Muscle
Just like how a few hundred words were hard for me to write at the start, nowadays writing more than 8000 words in a day is difficult. I can comfortably write 5000, and keeping track of my numbers has helped significantly lift my writing output. I am a competitive person, and as I am the only one working in this office, I have no-one to compete with but myself. Hitting those writing targets makes me feel good, because I not only did better, but I did better than past me.
Image description: Kermit the Frog typing enthusiastically
Mix It Up - Routine Kills Creativity, But Not Always
All my weeks are exactly the same, but they’re not. Keeping my routine to a minimum means that I know all my emails will get responded to and all the invoices will be chased up in good time, but not having a routine means I can pick up writing assignments that interest me (like this one). Because my book royalties come in consistently and I have made writing a daily habit, I can do other things that interest me career-wise and keep me sharp creatively without my business floundering. Something I couldn’t do if I was still struggling to get words out. This is how I’ve managed to get myself backstage at a bunch of gigs and festivals, and how I got to interview a dominatrix.
You will need to have some sort of routine in your life, but try to keep your routine to a minimum so you can chase other opportunities that interest you and keep your sharp creatively. Opportunities seem to pop up at weird times; make sure you’re ready for them when they come.
Listening To My Intuition
I had been wanting to write under my legal name for a while, and had started a few terrible manuscripts before abandoning them. The idea of writing under my legal name after enjoying the creative freedom that anonymity of a pen name gave me was more appealing than the reality of writing under my legal name.
It took me a long time to find a story that I both felt comfortable sharing under my legal name and that I truly care about. You see, if you don’t care about the story, your reader won’t. And if, upon starting a story, you have no idea where it’s going, then it won’t go anywhere. You’ll write more and faster if you know this project is worth it, and have some idea what it will look like at the end.
Stacey Farley
Stacey is a science writer and dystopian author. She also writes romance novels under a pen name. Always searching for great stories, she embodied the wandering hippy for many years before finally settling in her home town of Melbourne. Her debut dystopian novel hits stores in early 2019.