How Many Words/Pages Should You Write?

A writing book by Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, stresses that to get your novel done in a 31-day month by writing exactly 1,667 words per day. I personally set my goal to 1,100 words per day, and that is getting easier. I finished my daily word count (for today, starting at midnight) at 3:30 A.M.And an old-school writer named Gary Provost swore by his five typewriter pages a day. 

So who's right? I say: you.

"Whaaaaat?" 

It's your job to figure out how many words or pages you need to write. But I'm here to help you do that.

So, first of all, write as much as you comfortably can. Track how many words/pages you write for at least five days, and find the average. Maybe you wrote 1,290 words on day one, 503 words the second day, etc., and you come up with an average of 1,674 words per day. Now, that's probably a little too specific to keep track of, so maybe trim it down to 1,500 words a day. Or bump it up to 2,000 words. Just have two zeros at the end of your number. 

So now that you have a daily writing goal, stick to it. Write that number of words/pages every day. You can write more, if you want to. I don't care. I just care that you get your book done. As long as you want it to be (50,000 words, 250 pages), you need to reach it eventually, and eventually will come if you write every single day.