[captn3m0]

Someone I'd really like to point out is Brandon Sanderson. He's a prolific writer with an average of 2-3 books every year. He has been asked how he manages to write so much and at such quality (all his books regularly hit NYT bestseller lists), and his answers revolve around:

- He loves to write, more than ever; now that people are admiring his work.

- He regularly writes 2500 words/day. Every day. This isn't much, but becomes huge if done regularly.

- He often does little side-projects (often unplanned) that end up as published novellas, short-stories, or sometimes video-game tie-ins.

- His ideal plan is to do one big project (large epic sf book) and follow it up with a shorter YA novel.

- He has a huge list of books he plans to write (currently around 30-40 atleast) all in various stages of planning.

My favorite point is that he writes good _and_ fast, which is a very rare combination (see GRRM, for instance).

[smacktoward]

He regularly writes 2500 words/day. Every day. This isn't much, but becomes huge if done regularly.

Actually 2,500 words per day, every day, strikes me as a lot of writing. I did NaNoWriMo (http://nanowrimo.org) a couple of years ago, and to hit the "50,000 words in 30 days" target for that you have to turn out around 1,700 words each day. I'm a fast writer compared to a lot of folks -- just look at the length of some of my herniated HN comments to see what I mean -- and even I found that target to be a pretty big lift. It's do-able, I got in my 50,000 words, but by the end of the month I was exhausted. I can't imagine doing it every day for the rest of time -- and that's only 68 percent of the words Sanderson says he's turning out.

[captn3m0]

I missed the number a bit. Its 2000 words/day. Here's the quote:

>[..] I don't think I write all that quickly. I do about 2000 words a day, most days. That's 250 words an hour working a normal schedule, and I often work more. 250 words an hour is NOTHING. Try typing a few emails, and you'll find out how fast 250 words goes by. I think for me, there are two secrets.

- [From his AMA earlier today](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_b...)

So, he writes around 8 hours per day, which is something you'd expect him to do at his level. You have to realize that he does writing for-a-living, full time. Most people doing NaNoWriMo aren't doing it full-time.

But yeah, he's definitely writing _consistently_, and that's what I find interesting.