Day Forty-Six, and Some Fascinating Numbers from Famous Writers

Posted by Elisa Beatty Feb 24 2012, 12:02 am

During the Festival, lots of us have been focused on word counts: how many words during a sprint, how many words per day, how many words of a manuscript have we written?

Stephen King famously writes 10 pages daily. That’s between 2500 and 3300 words every day. Every day, even holidays and his own birthday. Apparently, he’s a big believer in momentum.

But big, booming word counts like that aren’t the only option.

Ernest Hemingway wrote just 500 words a day, in the mornings when he had peace and quiet.  Just 500 words. But he kept at it, and he completed many stories and novels that made him a good living, and made him part of the literary pantheon forever.

James Joyce was even pokier. He was a slow, careful craftsman who took pride in taking his time. According to a famous story, a friend stopped Joyce in the street to ask him if his writing day had been productive. “Oh, yes!” replied Joyce with a happy smile. How much had he written? “Three sentences,” Joyce replied. And in that fashion, he wrote Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake.

So how has your writing day been?

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