Writing measured and metered (Part 1)

What's the best way to measure writing progress? Am I being productive?

Am I wasting my time? Would I be better off doing something else?

These questions act as resistance to my writing life. And probably yours. Yet they need addressing. So, what's the solution? What is the best method for getting a grip on how well one is doing as a writer?

Let's look at some of the metrics in turn and consider the pros and cons of each.

Wordcount.

This is easy to accomplish. Unless you write longhand (I know some of us still do - in which case, either count manually or take an average per line and scale up), then it's a simple matter of clicking a button, or maybe highlighting an area of text and then clicking. Those of you using fancier programs may have built in systems to track wordcount with greater fidelity. Wordcount can be divided by days and hours to give a rate, so that's also useful.

Personally, when I'm writing hard, I place the date as a marker and use text from this point to where I'm at. I then record the wordcount in my notebook or spreadsheet (more on this later).

The wordcount is a raw measure of progress. It enables comparison with a known goal. Say, for instance I know I want to write a short story of 5K words, then the figure lets me see how far I'm along or far from completion. So in a positive way it can help to keep me on track by making me generate stuff. After all, I'll need to fill that story-sized gap. But it can act as a brake as well. If I'm at 4K, motoring nicely along, and the story is only half done then it can make me reassess my writing goal, or act to make me tighten what I've got and keep to my original plan. For me, I tend to let each story dictate its own length. If one were writing for someone else or part of a team, then the wordcount would be a reasonable way to assess a contribution. In most print media there's a requirement to fill a given space or to take a slice of a reader's attention. Payment may also be distributed according to the number of words submitted. So this brings us nicely to the issue of quality.

If I submit 2K of garbage, I think I'd get pulled up on it. The recipient would expect cogent, engaging and stylistically swish content. Not ungrammatical sludge with typos and incoherent ideas. Similarly, one can fool oneself with wordcount. It says very little about quality. Unless of course one wants to grade one's own work, like say a supermarket does its produce. This adds yet more resistance to the creative workflow.

I don't rate my work (that sounds a bit severe, doesn't it!), what I mean is I don't grade my work. I could though. At the end of each writing session I simply multiply my wordcount by an assessment of its quality. I could multiply by 0.5 for hastily written, badly punctuated and haphazard writing to weight it less favourably than the sublime words written in a golden haze of inspiration, the muse having dictated each delicious phrase with an expert eye to form and clarity and engagement (this would be multiplied by 1.5). Yet can we objectively grade our work? Probably not. I try to clean the writing as best I can of obvious claptrap and errors and use raw wordcount. That's me. Rough and ready.

The tendency when getting caught up in the wordcount thing is to let the quality slide. 'Words are words are words' can salve the conscience only so far. In reality, quality really does matter. In my opinion, questions of calibre stray over into issues of originality and true novelty - but that's a separate matter for another day.

It might be prudent to address the other issue of wordcount: comparing sizes. The thorny question of 'Is my wordcount or rate larger or smaller than Another's?'. I've seen daily wordcounts publicised for the likes of Lee Child and Mark Twain and Charlie Chaplin. There are two things to consider: one - the quality issue once again. I like to think that I write as well as the next person, though I know this is probably not true in rarefied company. And 2 - A large wordcount can sometimes cause burnout. Who can sustain 5k days indefinitely. Very few. There's going to be some serious crashing and burning, or at last plummeting quality. For all that Douglas Adams gave us, after The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, the barrel was visibly dry. And not only dry, but cracked and leaking. And he wasn't particularly prolific. Then there are the books which are samey. My mother used to read Catherine Cookson books. She couldn't get enough of them. Then all of a sudden, she stopped. 'They all read the same,' she said. And I don't doubt her.

It's also difficult to compare like with like. Who's to say that two hundred words of Shakespeare is equivalent to two hundred of E.L Grey, or not? They're both very different animals and tickle different parts of the reader's palette.

So the best way - the sanest way - is to compete with oneself. Surely that's the way forward? say, I wrote 1k quality words yesterday, and today I wrote 1.5K. That's progress. Adjustments can be made to the figures according to quality. The figures tweaked. We'll call them standardised words per day. Ah, that's good.

Ah, but what if no one ever reads them? Then that opens up another measure. Next time, eh? Part 2.