Letting go of word count

I’m pretty much in complete agreement with Britta C. here in her Medium post: Why I no longer focus on a daily word count goal - The Writing Cooperative:

It winds up taking me an hour or two just to crank out 200 words. And most of the time they’re not even a good 200 words. And I know you might be thinking: “your problem isn’t with having a word count goal — it’s with the fact that you allow yourself to get distracted.” And you’re not exactly wrong.

Which leads her to the next step: setting a timer and trying to stay focused instead of chasing a simple word count goal:

In 30 focused minutes, I usually write 500–700 words. They may not always be GREAT words, but they’re not as disjointed as they were when I was following the half-assed 200 words a day method. And I’m writing double the words in half the time, without even thinking about word count.

I think this is something I’m going to try to bake into my day.

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