Writing goal calculator

Your daily word count for a novel, a thesis or a NaNoWriMo-style challenge, based on the days you will actually write.

Words per writing day

1,055

67,500 words to go over about 64 writing days. Averaged over every calendar day that is 750 a day, or 5,250 a week.

Milestones

When each quarter of the target falls if you write the daily figure on every writing day.

Milestone	Words	Writing day
25%	20,000	8
50%	40,000	27
75%	60,000	46
100%	80,000	64

How the daily target is worked out

Words remaining: target − words written.
Writing days: days until deadline × writing days per week ÷ 7, rounded to the nearest whole day. Over 90 days at five days a week that is 64 writing days.
Words per writing day: remaining ÷ writing days, rounded up so the last day is not short.

The calendar-day and weekly figures spread the same remaining words over every day, which is useful for comparing with other people's pace or with a tracker that counts all days. Milestones assume you write exactly the required amount on each writing day, and show the writing day on which each quarter of the target is reached. In your browser, the approximate date is added, spreading writing days evenly through the week.

If you enter a deadline date, the days are counted from today up to the day before the deadline. The deadline day itself is treated as the day the work is due, not a day to write it.

A worked example

You are drafting an 80,000-word novel and have 12,500 words. The deadline you have set yourself is 90 days away, and you write on weekdays only.

Words left: 80,000 − 12,500 = 67,500.
Writing days: 90 × 5 ÷ 7 = 64.3, so 64.
Per writing day: 67,500 ÷ 64 = 1,054.7, rounded up to 1,055 words.
Averaged over every day: 67,500 ÷ 90 = 750 words a day, or 5,250 a week.
You pass 40,000 words, halfway, on writing day 27, and finish on writing day 64.

If a session of about an hour usually gives you 1,000 words, that is an hour on each weekday: a demanding but concrete plan. If it usually gives you 500, the same deadline means two hours a day, and the calculator has told you something important before you are halfway in.

Words per day for common targets

Writing every day, rounded up. 50,000 words is the NaNoWriMo target and a short novel; 80,000 to 100,000 is typical of many adult novels.

Target	30 days	90 days	180 days	365 days
50,000 words	1,667	556	278	137
80,000 words	2,667	889	445	220
100,000 words	3,334	1,112	556	274

Turning the daily figure into sessions

A daily word count is easier to hit as a number of timed sessions. Run a few sprints in the writing sprint timer to find your usual words per minute; it then shows how many sprints a day your project needs and links back here with your figures filled in.

The NaNoWriMo pace

National Novel Writing Month popularised a simple challenge: 50,000 words of a new novel between 1 and 30 November. That is 1,667 words a day, every day. The number works as a target because it is demanding without being absurd, and because it forces a first draft to be written quickly rather than polished sentence by sentence. The "Use NaNoWriMo" button above fills in the challenge; change the writing days per week to see what taking weekends off would cost.

Fifty thousand words is short for a finished adult novel in most genres, so many writers treat a NaNoWriMo draft as the first two-thirds of a book, or as raw material for a rewrite.

What the calculator cannot plan for

Uneven days. Real writing is lumpy. Some sessions produce three times the target and some produce nothing. The daily figure is an average to aim at, not a quota to hit every time.
Cutting. The calculator counts words forward. If you delete a chapter, your words written go down, and the plan changes accordingly. Some writers track new words drafted instead of the manuscript total; either works if you are consistent.
Revision. A deadline for a finished manuscript is not a deadline for a first draft. Leave time after the draft for rewriting, which this calculator does not plan.

Common questions

How many words a day is NaNoWriMo?

1,667. The challenge is 50,000 words in the 30 days of November, and 50,000 ÷ 30 = 1,666.7, which rounds up to 1,667. If you take one day off a week, the daily figure for the days you do write rises to about 1,925, and with weekends off to about 2,380.

How many words should I write a day?

Whatever you can sustain until the deadline. Professional novelists report very different habits, from a few hundred careful words a day to several thousand in fast drafting, and none of those numbers is a standard. A more useful approach is to measure what you produce in a typical session, then use this calculator to see whether that pace meets your deadline, and adjust the deadline or the sessions if it does not.

Should the target include rest days?

Yes, if you will actually take them. Planning to write every day and then missing two a week leaves you behind by the end of the first week. Setting five writing days a week from the start gives a higher daily number but one that matches reality, and any extra day you do write simply puts you ahead.

How long does it take to write a novel at 1,000 words a day?

An 80,000-word draft takes 80 writing days at 1,000 words a day: about 11 and a half weeks writing every day, or 16 weeks writing five days a week. A 100,000-word draft takes 100 writing days. Revision is a separate stage and often takes as long again or longer.

What if I fall behind?

Update the words written and the days left, and the calculator spreads the shortfall over the remaining writing days. Small daily increases are easier to absorb than one big catch-up weekend. If the new figure is far beyond what you normally write, it is usually better to move the deadline than to burn out trying to hit it.