: Re: Pacing yourself as a writer. I am a third year undergraduate student at university (21yrs). I absolutely love writing and I want to publish my pieces at some point. I write poetry, short stories,

@Jennifer354

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Everyone works differently. Some people write better at night, some in the morning. Just keep in mind that what you're looking for is a good weekly average. Don't listen to people who say you need to write every day, that's the road to misery. Just make sure you're on track and set a reasonable pace.

Two websites that might help are 750 Words and 4thewords. 4thewords has fun gamification.

One key is when you're writing, don't edit. Fixing spelling is one thing, but don't keep rewriting sentences for flow or word choice, that's how writer's block and frustration hits. Just get the words on the page. Edit it the next day before you start writing, to get back into the story.

If you have an overall story map, with the major arcs of your major characters and plot points planned out you can go much quicker. From there, you can create a list of scenes (possibly with beats) or work on whatever scene interests you most. That helps avoid writer's block. This works really well with Scrivener, which I highly recommend. It is pure awesome.

Most novels are about 90K words, plus or minus 15K depending on the genre. If you write on average 750 words a day, that's 4 months to write. A month to plan and a month to edit means you can write 2 books to first draft per year. If you can write a bit more, three novels per year, or 2 novels and some short stories are easily doable.

One thing that's key is to go back and add detail and polish, proof your work, and then have your work reviewed/edited. Join Critique Circle, or Scribophile. A local group or UCLA's extension school are other options for feedback.

Good luck!

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