You’ve heard it before, “You gotta give yourself a deadline or you won’t finish.” There’s probably some truth to that… if you’re building a house, or you need to get a proposal to your boss so that you don’t get fired, or you need to order a plane ticket before they’re sold out.  

But in novel writing? Nah. I don’t subscribe to that. I subscribe to writing a thousand words a day. When I do that enough times, it’s one day finished.  

I know it’s about sixty-five-thousand words for a work to be considered a novel. So, all I have to do is do that for at least sixty-five days. That’s a minimum. Book may go longer. Probably not over eighty-five-thousand words for burgeoning writers. But maybe. If that’s what the story needs in order to be told.  

A thousand words takes about an hour. Two, on those slog days where it seems nothing is coming easy. But fear not, those slog days may be your best work even though it doesn’t feel like it.  

When I type, THE END, I start the next book.  

You see, there’s no arrival. No end.  

I’m a thousand words per day writing machine.  

I’m a slave to those thousand words.  

Not a deadline.  

I’m not looking at a ticking clock on a bomb that if it goes off and I’m not finished, I’ve failed. I don’t need a carrot dangling in front of me three months out, spurring me to action.  

That action, the only action, the only carrot is that thousand words.