Writing 101: How to up your word count!

Word counts. Aren’t they great? I mean, to see the numbers of your story rise and rise and rise… and in a quick manner!

Oh wait, you don’t have that?

[enter sarcasm mode]

What do you mean you can’t sit down and write 1000 words in one sitting? It takes you a week or longer?! Are you kidding me?! What the fuck are you doing? Oh, you have a life. Of course!

[exit sarcasm mode]

I know. I know that I seem to be mass producing my stories. That I beat out chapters as if it’s nothing, but the truth is, it’s still hard work. While you guys have a job or children to take care of, I’m medically retired and I’m basically sitting in front of the computer all day unless I need to clean or do the groceries so yeah. I have the time. 

I have the time to write but it has nothing to do with how fast or how much I write. I need to be careful not to burn myself out or hurt myself. I had to buy an ergonomic keyboard a few years ago because I wrote so much that my fibromyalgia in my hands started to act up. I take days off from writing because I know I can afford it due to my fast typing, but also to recharge. I then play video games or catch up on my fave shows 🙂

And because I’m able to write whenever I want, I post a lot and thus get not the number of reviews or views on a story that someone else might get who updates perhaps once a month or once a year. Because my story is fresher. And will always be that way. And that’s fine. It doesn’t hurt me, I write for me anyway!

I think this goes for anyone who beats out words as if it’s nothing. They don’t work for various of reasons and don’t have any commitments.

Thing is, I don’t boast about my word counts because to me, they’re normal. Or they’re my new normal, because I can tell you that the struggle has been real ever since I started posting online and saw my new friends write stories with so. Many. words. It was insane and quite depressing. I decided to write more fics but without the word count instead. I wanted to beat them in at least something! (this is the WORST thing to to do, btw.)

Let me dig for the evidence.

• 2005: 2890 words.
• 2006 I wrote 36 fics. All between 3000-5000 words. Can’t say they were the best quality, but I wrote.
• 2007: I wrote 23 fics. The longest was a fic I worked on for a year and a half; 10.890 words.
• 2008: 36 fics written. Again worked for a year on a story of 27.000 words. That was my longest story up until then. I also published a story for Man from U.N.C.L.E and that was 40.000 words but it took me longer than two years to write it!
• 2009: 30.000 words
• 2010: 25.000 words
• 2011 35.000 words. (and 350.000 words with Meeko)
• 2012 was particularly bad because Meeko had started to work again. I wrote maybe 14.000 words by myself and my writing got ruined by writing with my best friend who wanted to write again and needed some help with writing in a good way and we wrote 600.000 words of … Uh… The story is good, but too much? This was a good lesson for me, though.
• 2013: 4000 words. My project with my friend had burned me out (no shit!).
• 2014: started off great, and then… nothing. Fandom friend died, couldn’t write anything related to NCIS, Stargate, Numb3rs and all the shows connected to it. It’s 4000 words of roleplay stories and 1 Teen Wolf fic. But, it was also the year where Meeko dragged me out of my slump again after having suffered the same grief as I did over the loss of our mutual friend and we wrote Gambling Hearts together, a Twilight/Arrow fic of 92.000 words.
• 2015: This was the year that I finally started to be myself again, that I felt great and turned my head around. HOLY CRAP I wrote 400.000 words by myself! In only 10 fics! Some were longer than the other, but hooooooly! It’s when I started to join in fully with the Twilight fandom. But I keep writing my crossovers because yay, crossovers!
• Sanctuaire was born. Fractured Marionette. Missed Connections.
• 2016: 245.000 words, give or take. Stories were a bit more intricate than the year before.
• 2017: 202.000 words.

 

At this point I’d like to insert a conversation I had with Meeko when I wrote up my year in review in 2017 because I whined that I wrote ‘only’ 202.000 words.

Meeko: Yeah and how many words did you write 10 years ago?!

Buggy:  *checks* 41.638 words – 23 small fics, longest being 10k.

Meeko: Quit your whining then. I wrote way less than even that this year!

 

“You said you didn’t like to boast but you just produced your entire word count history for the last 13 years.”

To show you that I’ve been writing for a very long time and that even I struggled getting the words out. And just because there are a lot of words involved, doesn’t mean that I don’t question myself.

“Oh Buggy, but it’s not fair to do – this challenge – with you because you’ll hit the minimum word count in a matter of days, this is easy for you!”

“Oh, of course Buggy was the first one to reach her goal for – this challenge – and is even showing off by continuing to write the rest of the month and adding to her word goal!”

I actually get these remarks A LOT. And no doubt anyone else who seems to beating out stories like it’s nothing. Doesn’t do anything for the confidence, you know. A bigger word count doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a better story! Don’t be intimidated by someone who has all the time in the world to write and writes a lot.

Are you jealous? Or should I be excluded from every challenge because I know I can hit the word count goal? Or maybe I should just quit posting online? (yep, that thought HAS crossed my mind multiple times)

 

Challenge/Gift Exchange or not, I do wish I was able to add more words, how can I do that?

Now, this is something I can work with! I have a lot of experience with struggling and getting my head pulled out of my ass. Even while I was still working or blinded by headaches (2005-2010).

• Write when you can. Do you have an office job? Have a notepad next to you and write sentences down to add them to your story when you have the time. Are you shopping and you have inspiration? Open the notes on your phone or dictate to yourself!
• Make the time to write. For any hobby, you need to free up time to do it, so why not for writing? Even when there’s nothing in your mind at that point because your muse decided to toddle off, write something. Write about your day. Write about the life of an inanimate object. Or write about one of your characters that’s standing on a blank page. (I wrote about the thoughts of the Copper couch on the Mentalist, and John Sheppard (Stargate Atlantis) cussing me out from a blank paper I was writing on… oh and I wrote literal car porn (KITT/General Lee) and the TARDIS. Meeko once wrote from the POV of Ziva’s desk (NCIS))
• No distractions. Writing time = you time. No surfing on the web unless it’s for research. No facebook, no twitter. No netflix!
• Write something every day. Start with 200 words and work your way up. And like the advice above, it doesn’t have to be on your story, just write! The more you write, the easier it gets!
• Play the right music. Make a playlist in Spotify or Itunes or Apple Music or whatever streaming service you use for your particular story. Listening to instrumental soundtracks is great too, you won’t hear words so you won’t get distracted. I often listen to Lindsey Stirling.
• When you’re writing a multi-chapter story, break the chapters down in manageable chunks. Like… start with 1500 words a chapter as a minimum. More is always better because sometimes you have more to tell. For most stories I’m currently sitting at 3000 words a chapter. The Big Bang I’m writing has at least 4000 words a chapter because there’s a lot to cover.
• Make an outline. Holy crap. I’ve already told you the perks about outlining but seriously, when you have notes, or an outline and thus something to hold on to, you’re golden.
• Add subplots and tangents. Allow your characters to stray from the main story and put the issues they’re dealing with on the backburner by having them do something fun! Or something as ordinary as a trip to Walmart!
• If you’re writing for a challenge that has a minimum word count (for example Nanowrimo), set mini goals for yourself. Write the first 1000 words? Have a cookie. Another 1000 words on the same day? Have another cookie. And another 1000 words? Girl, you deserve some sleep and some ice cream! You can make the goals as small or large as you want.
• Don’t edit as you go. Editing is for when you want to publish it. Sure, you can catch the odd mistake here and there, but don’t keep reading what you’ve written, just write. Keep it going or it’ll drive you nuts.
• Surround yourself with great people. I do my best writing when I’m on Skype with Meeko even if we’re not talking. It’s just to throw out ideas back and forth and see how things could play out. When you work in google docs, for example, you can share it with your good people or your beta/cheerleader so they can cheer you on, give you ideas and if you’re concerned about editing while writing, they can edit for you while you keep writing!
• Don’t look at other writers and their word count. It’s like… real life. Think about yourself and don’t worry about what others may think. Don’t look at other writers and their word count, it’s not your business. It’s theirs. Writing is not a competition unless you entered a challenge or a competition. Then it is on!

• Be confident. Seriously, you can do this!

• Don’t think about the words. Seriously, just write and check the word count later.

 

So once more for everyone in the back:

• • Don’t compare yourself with others. Everyone has different amounts of time and/or inspiration to write. Just write.
  • YOU CAN WRITE! YOU CAN DO THIS!
  • DON’T THINK ABOUT THE WORDS. JUST WRITE!

 

Hope this helped!

 

My question for other writers; how do you up your word count?