I have set a goal to finish my novel before the end of this year, so that means I have seven weeks before December 31st. I started working on the first draft on July and took a break from it (see post Wrestling with Your Characters 1-2) for the entire month of October. Now, I am up to 19,500 words and my goal is to pass the 50,000 words by the set date. I decided to break things down in numbers to see how manageable that was for me.
Taking 50,000 words as my base number minus the 19,500 words I have in, that equals 30,500 left for me to write. I divided that number between seven weeks, giving me a total of 4,357 give or take words per week, or an equivalent of 622 words per day. That is not bad at all, and certainly very doable for me. It looks that I will have my first draft before the new year begins, cause for celebration. In an equation it would look like this:
50,000 – 19,500 = 30,500 ÷ 7 = 4,357 ÷ 7 = 622
Usually, I write and don’t worry about word count or numbers (the reason I will never do Nanowrimo) but in this case, I needed to figure out the numbers to see if I would be able to meet my goal in the set timeframe. That will take care of the first draft, and then the hard part starts, revisions 2 and 3, for me. I stop at the third revision.
If you are trying to write a novel, novella, or novelette, try this. Give yourself an amount of time, and then break down the correspondent amount of words (an approximate) per week/day and that will make the task easier. It will help you get an idea of how many words to put in (if you miss a writing day). Or follow best-selling author Claire Cook’s advice of writing two pages a day.
So go ahead and microwrite that novel a few words at a time.
Inkspeare 
Good idea! It makes it seem just a little more manageable
Yes, not so daunting, right?
I hope things go well for you. I’m about 160,000 words into my novel. At first I wanted it to be ready to rewrite at the end of this month, but it looks as though it may take another month.
I once said I’d never write a book over 80,000 words. I’m now a little past the point where I first conceived the story. I hope to wrap it up in less than 200,000.
Why so long? I loved the characters and their lives and just had to write about them.
When writing I normally write 1,000 to 1,500 words a day with gusts up to 2,000.
Wow, that is a long novel. It will become a mammoth book. My busiest days freelancing, I have gotten up to over 4,000 words a day, which leaves me exhausted to write anything else and tend to other business. I am happy if I get to write 500 words daily on my novel, at least it will keep moving ahead.