Most Words Written In One Month?

[dgackst]

For those word counters out there, what is your record for most words written in one month's time?
Follow up question: was that word count sustainable in later months or was it very much a 'push-to-write-forget-all-else' kind of month?
This thread is just for curiousity and is in no way meant to be a competition between who'd written the most.

 

[blorente]

Hey!
Mine was definitely a "push-to-write" month. I was in the middle of writing a book, and I had a month between jobs. So I decided to just get it done. It was somewhere around 40k words, I finished a 70k novel then, currently being edited

I honestly never thought I'd finish a book, so just doing that is a thing off my bucket list!

 

[Astro Pen]

About 40K. But I don't make a habit of it.
The thing is that if you get on a roll it is quite easy, but you have to be loving the story unfolding.
My mistake is currently having 3 books on the go. This kind of prevents "immersive writing" where the book is my life.
I need to roll a dice and file the other two for now. I think that will be the faster option.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

According to my nanowrimo stats, my record for one month (November 2017) was 74,333 words. Nano suits me well and I’ve managed between 50k and 74 k every year since I discovered it in 2014, except for the year I used it to finish off a WIP. That year I stopped when I finished.
I do try to write a couple of thousand words a day when I’m actually free to write and not tied up with family stuff. I’m a really bad typist with arthritic fingers and have to correct myself constantly. If I had one wish, it would be to be able to touch type.
I’ve a friend who writes far more prolifically than me. I asked him his secret one day and he said he uses dictation software.
What @Astro Pen said about immersive writing is right, I think. When I’m deep inside my characters’ heads, I don’t feel hungry, my coffee/tea goes undrunk, I neither see nor hear anything going on around me. Maybe drowning in creativity is a better expression for it!

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I wrote The Girl With Two Souls in eighteen days. 90k I think. But I do write intensively when I can, and, if you can pull it off, it's a great way to work. Can't say I'd recommend it though, as it's a bit of a risky strategy. But the point is that the experience of "living" your imagined world is crucial. Convey that sensation to your readers and it's a winning formula.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

The thing is that if you get on a roll it is quite easy, but you have to be loving the story unfolding.

This

 

[msstice]

As the drunk said about drink, my best writing month is the next one.

 

[Toby Frost]

I write pretty slowly, and the most I've ever done in a day is about 3,500 words. That was when I knew exactly what to write and had the entire day clear. Normally, I try to write about 500 words per day, and slowly proceed like that.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Back before I had three kids, I wrote 70,000 words in a weekend so probably wrote over a 100,000 words that month. These days I think I write a couple of thousand words a week in the two hours I have at the library before writer's group.

I did NaNoWriMo for about ten years but at the moment with college it's just not practical - I have written thousands of words by way of essay this month.

 

[sknox]

Just in case any of us get cocky, I just read about a British author, John Creasey. Wrote mysteries and thrillers, mainly, but wrote all over the place in bits. The numbers vary, but over the course of his life (65 years) he published somewhere between five hundred and six hundred novels, under twenty-eight pen names.

That said, I love what another author said of him. It was something along the lines of "by report, Creasey has written 435 novels. The reports are wrong. He has written one book, 435 times over." <wicked grin>

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It was many years ago so I am not sure of the exact numbers but it was approximately 30,000 a month for three months running. I am not proud of it, though, because in my case I wasn't working on a first draft, which then was improved over a longer period. It was part of a push to write a book that was already over-deadline and this was essentially getting the story down, doing a swift edit, and out the door. The resulting book was far from being my favorite thing I have written (and I haven't learned to like it better given the perspective of years—if anything I like it less) and I wish I hadn't rushed it.

 

[The Big Peat]

Somewhere over 40k of fiction (I am over 50k this month for NaNo, but it contains a lot of blog writing too). Day high is 5k. Simply lack the attention span to push higher.

 

[Bren G]

I was keeping track for about two months when I first started my novel. I averaged about 1,400 per writing session (roughly every other day). First month was 17k, the second 19k. Note too I began each writing day with an edit of the last sessions words. I found this to speed up editing time. Editing that is a topic in and of itself. It's easy to write a novel, much harder sustain your vim and vigour while you edit it.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Good god! These numbers look terrifying. I spent two hours yesterday working on my current comic strip. At the end of two hours solid uninterrupted work I had drawn one background character before deciding she wasn't going to say the thing I thought she was going to say and added four words a couple of panels later. (And I'm not sure about them.)

before:

after:

 

[dgackst]

I have found it hard for myself to push anything past 4,000 words in one day. But typically I try to write around 650 - 750 words/ day, on average, throughout a month. Some days of the month I will write less, other days I will write more, and some days I won't write at all.