A bitter cure for Writer’s Block!
A little math to help fuel your creativity
I want to be a professional novelist. I want to make money writing and publishing books and hopefully get acclaim or notoriety for my work. However, I lack the work ethic necessary to achieve this dream.
This horrible realization is what led me to create this seemingly harmless, yet endlessly terrifying little questionnaire. Let me take you through what I learned.
Question One- Do I want to be a professional writer? Or, am I writing stories just for fun?
Let me start with the alternative since we already know my answer to this question.
If you don’t want to be a professional writer, then go do something else that is fun and exciting and keeps you engaged. Your writing doesn’t make you any money. You’re not trying to make money with your writing. You don’t need to look at it as a job!
Write only when inspiration strikes. Have fun with it or let it be! Worrying about your writing is not helping you.
Now, since I do want to be a professional in this field. Let’s continue.
Question Two- What do I want to write?
I want to be a novelist! That’s the dream.
I realized early on that different forms of writing require different skill sets. Hence I want to focus on one skill at a time to gauge my effort.
Question Three- How many books do I want to write in a year?
My goal is to write one book every year. I realize that there are writers who are capable of writing more but that is a big commitment considering I’m only starting my writing journey. As focused as I can try to be, I also want to make time for my other interests in life, so I’ll start with one book a year.
Question Four- How many pages do I need to write per book?
On average, I imagine a book to be around 500 pages(181,000 words).
Question Five- How many words or pages do you write in a day?
This is a tricky question. It needs a degree of brutal honesty and looking at yourself objectively.
I wasn’t objective, AT ALL, prior to creating this questionnaire. I convinced myself that whatever progress I was making was slow but still enough to get me to the finish line. So, bear that in mind as you read on.
I started a project on April 5th, 2021 with the aim to finish the draft by the end of the year. So far, I have written almost 5 pages(1800 words) and I am 129 days into the project.
I calculated my current output at 0.0030 pages per day(13.95 words per day). That’s less than 1% OF ONE PAGE WRITTEN EVERY DAY for the last 129 days!
I know that output isn’t always consistent like this. Some days are better than others, but the point I’m trying to make with these absurd numbers is just how delusional I was about the scale of this project.
Fair Warning: The numbers are going to get even more absurd as you continue.
I have roughly 142 days remaining this year. My current output will give me 0.426 pages(153 words) by the end of the year!
I know! I’m tearing up as I write this…
Question Six- How many pages per day would it take to meet the deadline?
I’ve written 5 pages and I have 495 pages to go. With 142 days remaining, I will need to write 3+ pages EVERY DAY for the rest of this year to make the deadline.
Sounds doable, I guess. It’s not 10 or 15 pages per day that I was afraid was needed to meet the deadline. So, it should be possible if I attempt to work every day without fail. I hope.
Question Seven- If you didn’t bother to do this exercise and you continued at this pace, how long would it have taken to finish the project?
Okay, this question isn’t a realistic scenario, but let’s assume I didn’t bother to question myself and I continued to believe that I was going to complete the book at the pace at which I’m currently writing.
My current pace is 0.0030 pages per day(13.95 words per day). I need to complete writing 495 pages, so how many days will I take to maintain the current writing output? How long would it take?
If I continue with these ABYSMAL NUMBERS, I will need 165,000 days. That is 452 years!!
I realize that these numbers are absolutely insane. They are and they’re meant to be absurd. But these are the facts of my practice and my conviction. I was clearly never honest about it to myself or my peers.
And creating this silly exercise as a way to procrastinate from writing is all the irony I need for the rest of my life!
I believe this exercise can be used for any of the pet projects that you have been pushing off. Whatever block you suffer from can be removed if you simply be honest and ask yourself these simple questions (modified to your relevant field, of course). The answers will tell you more about you and your work than you would be capable of doing yourself.
P.S. For those of you wondering about the page to word count conversion, here’s a little guide.
Font: Courier; Size: 12; 1 Page = ~360 words
