One Cup of Writing

I’m not a writer, but I do, pathetically, attempt to write novels for my own amusements and did try to maintain a constant daily progress about 1,000 words a day. I was curious about how other people -- amaetur or professional -- does it, more precisely, how much other people write in a day.

A few searches and pages, some suggests word quota as I did, other uses pages, there is also by the number of cards. 500 words or 10 pages, they all use fairly precise measurements, although 10 pages really seems a lot.

Meanwhile, in search of the good daily amount, I also tried to find out when is a good time to writing. Instinctively, I’d say around the midnight, but science says it’s in the morning when you get to use concentration from full quota, yes, I read there is a limited amount of concentration for each daily.

Also, music for writing. I found sometimes I can’t write with music, but other times I listen to rock’n’roll. I feel it’s completely environmental. During the day, if the background noise from outside world is too loud, I need something loud; otherwise, instrumental or no music. At night, if close to midnight, if there is no cats fighting outside or trying to do some hinkyhunky 1+ (in cat age) things, I wouldn’t listen to any music.

Back to how much to write in a day. After reading pages of other people’s ways, I suddenly realized that there is already a great countdown timer for me as I sipped the coffee from the cup.

Why not just write by the drink?

When the drink is finished, the day’s writing is done. So, I started to gather some statistics on what and how much I drank -- every cup differs, type of stuff were written, and the times of start and end.

As of this posting published, I’ve recorded 12 cup, from coffee to mint tee to pure water, and hot, cold, or room temperature. The summarized results are

• On average, 1,086 words per cup of about 245cc.
• 1cc of drink lasts about 30.61 seconds, or roughly 250cc for 128 minutes 

For some reason, having a sip after some typings seems to help my concentration, or more practical function, a quick break from the typing to have random thoughts on whatever is written.