The Life-Changing Magic of a Word Count Goal

My first visit to Varuna was in April 2021. It was a residency awarded by Affirm Press in conjunction with Varuna, and it enabled me to spend a wonderful week in the Blue Mountains, working on my manuscript and talking to editors and other writers about all things YA, sci-fi, and fantasy.

I allocated most of my work time that week towards absorbing and unpacking editorial feedback and developing a strategy as to how I was going to incorporate that feedback, which encompassed everything from world-building to plot holes to nitty-gritty details like ‘how old is this character meant to be?!’

I made a lot of good progress on those elements while I was here, but – confession time – I didn’t do a lot of actual writing.

If I’m honest, I mostly luxuriated in the experience of being here; a dedicated space where writers are supported and encouraged and creatively nourished and completely autonomous.

The headspace was glorious. I’d work in the morning, then go for a walk. I’d come back, work some more, then wander off on another walk (there are so many to choose from). Then, when evening rolled around, I’d join lovely, like-minded people in the living room lined with wall-to-wall bookshelves, build a fire, eat dinner (legendary Varuna dinners!), and have a fabulous time.

Some nights I’d wander back out to Eleanor Dark’s studio (my writing space during that stint) to do a little bit more work. My writing energy shifts at night; I’m a lot less hard on myself and a lot more experimental, so it can be quite productive. Other nights I’d climb into bed with a book and every intention of reading it, only to fall asleep with the light on and wake up with the book on my face at 2am.

I enjoyed every second of that first visit, but this time around I want to be a little more structured in terms of what I’d like to have achieved by the end of the week – whilst remaining reasonable and not putting an inhumane amount of pressure on myself.

I want to finish at least one of the outlines (book two) and make decent progress in terms of the book two draft word count.

When I’m revising or editing, a word count goal doesn’t matter to me so much (unless I somehow have a 500-word – or worse, 10,000-word – chapter, in which case things have veered dramatically off the structural rails). But when I’m drafting a first draft, a daily word count goal is the best mental trick I have up my sleeve to stop myself from curling up in the foetal position while hyperventilating into a paper bag.

First drafts suck. That’s my official stance. They suck. They suck to read and they suck to write, because you’re writing things and it’s making you cringe, and all your characters are unlikeable and they’re not doing what you want them to, and this is the worst thing you’ve ever written and OH GOD WHAT AM I EVEN DOING WITH MY LIFE?!

They suck, yet they are unavoidable and ultimately invaluable.

The beauty of a word count goal for a first draft is that it tricks your mind into focusing on (and prioritising) quantity rather than quality. It shifts you away from tinkering and editing and panicking, at a point where you really should just be mentally vomiting possibilities onto the page and pushing forward. Initiatives like NaNoWriMo work off this philosophy (though to be clear, I’ve never done NaNoWriMo – I know it works wonders for a lot of writers, but the pace is a little faster than my natural rhythm is happy to go).

When I was writing the first draft of my first novel, I really only started making progress when I instigated a daily word count goal of 300 words. It was a bite-sized goal, very manageable, but most importantly: effective. Write 300 words every weekday for a week, and you’ve got 1500 words. Do it for a month, and you’ve got a couple of chapters banked. Don’t underestimate the small increments of time you put towards your writing; they are cumulatively valuable.

Later, when my momentum started picking up (and a deadline loomed), I changed the goal to 500 words. Now I usually manage somewhere between 500 and 1000, assuming I have a clear window of time.

I managed to tick off 3,333 new words today. Is the writing amazing? No. But there are some little pieces of potential gold in there, waiting for when I get around to the next draft. But most of it is messy and sloppy and leaves me uncomfortable, the way a first draft should.

Now for a confession. Aside from the fact I’m at Varuna and writing is pretty much the one thing I have to focus on, the reason I managed 3,333 words today may have something to do with the fact that a kookaburra woke me up at 5 am and I couldn’t get back to sleep. So, I made coffee, sat down at my desk, and bashed out 1,000 words before I could think about it too much. It is unlikely I’ll be able to replicate that level of productivity tomorrow as I am NOT a morning person.

Side note: I also managed to squeeze in a walk and came across a lyrebird near Katoomba Falls. This excited me to no end because my dad has a funny story about lyrebirds, and I thus had to take a photo of it to prove to him that I’d spotted one in the wild, so my walk turned into a bizarre 7am bird-stalking endeavour.

Alas, the photos are inconclusive at best.