Negative Wordcount

If you've ever talked to me about writing, especially writing productively, then you probably know that I'm a big fan of tracking your wordcount. It has so many statistical uses. For example if you know how many words you can produce per hour (on average) then you can:

1. estimate how long it will take you to complete a project
2. set realistic weekly or daily goals
3. push yourself to reach those goals
4. bill yourself for hours that you're going to work and treat yourself like a professional with realistic goals and deadlines

Of course, there are also drawbacks. If you push yourself to hit wordcount goals, you may settle for sub-par writing. You might see your goals pile up on you and get overwhelmed. Or, as happened to me today, you may have to delete a section of your writing and come up with a negative word count.

There are of course methods for dealing with each of these. I view my wordcount goals like I view plot structure models. They're good for analysis, but not necessarily good to think about when actually writing. This allows me to focus on writing when I'm writing, and then look at my wordcount afterwards. If I need a little extra push when I'm sitting at 349 words, and my goal is 395, I know I can do just a bit more. But if I get to 349 words and I'm struggling to come up with more, my kids  need me, or I have to go to work (at my other job, because as we all know writing is work), I can be satisfied with where I got and get back to it in my next writing session.

To avoid overwhelming goals, I just don't set cumulative goals. My goal for every day right now is about 492 words. That is a little less than an hour of work when I'm in the middle of a project. A little more when I'm starting out a new project or trying to get my head into a new scene, chapter, book, etc. When I started setting goals, I would freak out if I didn't hit my goal for two days and I'd add them to my next writing session. After a rough week, that might mean that I'm trying to write 3600 words in one sitting. I've done that before, but it can be terribly demotivating if I don't have the proper momentum built up, or if I don't have the time to commit to a six hour session. So my numbers don't roll over anymore. I might get ambitious sometimes and set a weekly goal, but that's entirely situational.

Now for the reason I'm writing this post at all. Negative wordcount.

There have been a number of times that I've been racking my brain to figure out how to finish a scene, or where to go next in my book. Usually, and I discovered this from a writing newsletter from Dave Wolverton, this is because I'm not satisfied with one or more choices I've made. I did something wrong and it's affecting the story so much that I can't continue until I go back. (Usually I discourage going back to edit your story while writing the first draft, but that's a topic for another time.) When this happens, I give myself some time to review the scene and find a better solution, one I'm more satisfied with. Then, when I go back to make the changes, my wordcount calculator shows that I've not only failed to add words but I've actually gone backwards.

The first time this happened I was devastated. I looked back at my productivity and saw an encouraging upward trend, and then all of a sudden I was in the negative. But when I analyzed what I was feeling, I recognized that I actually felt good about what I had written. The material was better than what I had originally produced, and I knew I had made the right choice.

Now when I hit a negative wordcount day, I am excited. It means that I'm progressing my story in underlying ways that make it a better product. To fall back on a well used saying; quality over quantity. I'm increasing quality in the long run while the quantity suffers a bit in the short run.

While I wouldn't recommend simply deleting whole pages just to get a negative wordcount, it's useful to remember that statistics are just numbers representing events in real life. They're tools for us to use, not masters for us to bow down to.

So, celebrate your progress, even if that progress is measured in the negative.