1,666 words a day. That’s all that matters if you’re doing NaNoWriMo. 2,000 words a day is the target if you’re Steven King.
Challenging yourself to write a certain number of words a day can give you the incentive to break through resistance and get your butt in the chair.
But word counts can work in only one out six stages of the Creative Process. If you’re not generating new material, word counts are just a stick for your Saboteur to beat you with.
Five stages out of six, word counts are irrelevant at best and a set-up for frustration, self-recrimination and resistance at worst.
How do you count words when you’re doing research? How do you count words when you’re editing and the goal is to tighten the piece, i.e. reduce the word count?
This is one of the reasons I use the term “Product Time” instead of “writing time” and why I recommend you make commitments to show up for a specified amount of time, not a certain number of words.
What goals you should target depends on which of those six stages you’re in (read more). I also discuss the stages in Chapter 4 of Around the Writer’s Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Writer’s Resistance.
Do you know what stage your writing project is in?
Bane of Your Resistance 
When people ask me how long their book should be I ask them “How many minutes do you stay on the train?”
The answer is “That’s the wrong way to measure.”
Consider yourself newslettered. Again.
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Thanks Joel! I love the question about the train trip.
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Though this new title makes more sense, I loved the meta-Freudianicity of having a number for the blog title.
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