Many years ago during my New Adult Romance writing days, I used to pump out a lot of words.
A METRIC TONNE OF THEM.
Just to put things into perspective, Stephen King writes approximately 2,000 words a day on a given project. No slouch by any means. However, in the indie writing world, that is considered a standard output, which divides a lot of opinions (as does everything these days).
Some argue that quality beats quantity every time.
Others staunchly believe there is no correlation between quality and the number of words written.
So, what did I do?
I did it all.
I did the 2,000 words a day. And when that didn’t satisfy me, I cranked it up to 5,000-word days. And when THAT didn’t tickle my pickle anymore, I went full-on MadMan mode and cranked out 10,000 words a day.
Did I see diminished quality in the words?
Not as much as I feared it would.
What I DID see, however, was my love for writing fall off a cliff.
It no longer became fun — it became a job.
There’s only so much sitting, typing, and eye strain your spirit can take before you start to think the red-light district isn’t such a bad choice of career. It got so bad that I had to buy those ghastly orange glasses just to prevent the blue light from blitzing my vision.
And speaking of eyesight…
To this day, my left eye hasn’t been the same.
It’s blurred and has strange shapes obscuring my vision.
Only once I threw in the towel to these marathon writing sessions did my love for writing return. Mind you, it took well over a year for Milo-the-Muse to pull me out of the hole I had dug myself into.
Thank goodness he did, otherwise I would never have written 7 supernatural thrillers (two of which are published)… a post-apocalyptic novel (that needs editing)… 5 fantasy novels… and 141 micro-stories that — only a few short weeks ago — I finally got around to compiling into a nicely organised e-book, which you can find right here:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/Tiny-Epics-Vol-1
And for those who prefer to listen to their books, the audiobook version is coming very soon.
DJJW