I have this habit when I write. Just to keep myself honest, I start every day by writing down the current word count. The goal is to add 1,000 more before knocking off for the day. That's about three double-spaced pages.
I tiptoe into the manuscript, cleaning up the previous day's work to remind me where I left off. Hemingway was a big fan of not thinking about a project between the end of one day and beginning of the next, believing the subconscious would sort out any issues.
I believe this to be true.
Hemingway also said that to write a great novel, one must first clean out the refrigerator.
This nod to procrastination and all the devices we use to avoid the hard labor of plumbing the soul for just the right words is also correct, in my estimation. My version of cleaning out the refrigerator usually involves checking out airfares to someplace i want to travel for research.
Some days I get to 1,000. Others I go a little higher. I used to shoot for 2,000 but that means a ten-hour day in the chair. Those are the writing sessions where I drink too much coffee and postpone my workout, then feel like dog shit when I'm done because I've also put off showering. One downside of those long days is that they're unsustainable. Write 2,000 carefully chosen words on Monday and Tuesday is sure to be right around 300. One thousand is just right.
I daydream when I'm chasing a thousand, imagining myself in London or Mammoth or, right now, Midway Atoll. I don't think about things like sex or what's on TV that night. Just travel. Not sure why.
I shut out the world as I chase 1,000, ignoring the phenomenal chaos now defining my office. I don't pay bills or take calls. I get angry when I do something stupid like schedule a lunch.
Do I always get a thousand? Not by a longshot. The other day I got so caught up in studying the USS Yorktown that I actually wrote a negative-100 words, cutting out stuff from the day before that didn't sound right.
That's the thing about the thousand: it's not just sitting down and pounding out anything that comes to mind. This isn't the same as writing emails (or this blog, which — as you may have mentioned — just flows onto the page of its own accord). The thousand are carefully chosen little gems.
When my oldest son was five he told me he wanted to do an imitation of me writing. He sat down in my chair, opened my laptop, put his fingers on the keyboard, then stared at the screen. After a minute he typed something for a couple seconds, then started staring again.
I had no idea that's how it looked, but that's what happens. A lot of staring. A lot of thinking. A little writing. After six months, a book emerges. The final product will number 85,000 words or so. The editing process means the actual number written is more like 200,000. The delta simply disappears.
This year, that book is Taking London. It's on sale in just two days! This wonderful habit of locking myself in a room for hours to write a thousand words produced this beautiful collision of art and commerce. It's a pretty awesome feeling.
I hope you enjoy reading Taking London as much as I reveled in the writing process. I've sold something like 20 million copies of my books over the last thirty years, but this is the most exciting, thrilling, intensely-researched, page-turning thing I've ever written. Bar none.
A thousand words per day.