Word count goals for writing

Setting a word count goal when sitting down to write was something I had never done before attending my first structured Rowena Murray style writing retreat with Maureen Michael. I’ll admit I was a bit sceptical. I had no idea what to put in the little ‘target word count’ space. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know what my typical writing ‘speed’ was, or if knowing such a thing was useful. What I have learned however, is that word count goals from a behavioural perspective, make sense.

Word count goals are examples of behavioural goal setting and monitoring, which are two categories of Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) included in an established and commonly used Taxonomy developed by Susan Michie and colleagues. If we want people to learn, change or stop a behaviour, then it’s helpful to know the extent that the original behaviour (or lack of behaviour) is performed and how this changes over time. Word counting is an excellent example of quantifying performance of the writing behaviour.

In our writing planner each writing session has two columns. This mirrors the planner developed by Rowena Murray, and we have made the boxes and columns exaggerated because we think this is such an important behavioural tool.

The first column has been labelled as ‘Planning’. It provides prompts to describe the type of writing behaviour you intend to perform in that writing session (writing or editing), a brief description of what you want to write (that will be the subject of a future blog!) and a space to put a word count goal. The act of describing and setting a word count goal supports the BCT of Goal setting’. When you have finished the writing session, you can complete the second column which we have labelled ‘Progress’. This supports another BCT ‘Self-monitoring of behaviour’ as you have tracked (and written down) your performance of the behaviour during that writing session.

So what? Well, in short, it’s the cognitive (thought) process of comparing these two columns where the magic happens. Rowena’s structured writing retreat format includes time for reflecting on writing performance. This is to support planning during the remaining writing sessions in a retreat. This time to reflect and discuss your writing is important as it is associated with other BCTs. These include ‘Review behaviour goals’ as you think about what word count goal you may set for the next session. Reflecting on differences between what you intended to write and what you managed to write supports another BCT ‘Discrepancy between current behaviour and goal’. Writers at a retreat may also find themselves ‘Problem Solving’ i.e. thinking about whether there’s anything they might want to do differently in future writing sessions.

When setting and reviewing my own word count goals, I have found several benefits from these cognitive processes. In the early days, it was just interesting to know how much I could write when I was well prepared (or less well prepared) for writing (subject of another future blog article). When I make less progress against what I plan, and I enter into ‘problem solving’ it often sheds light on my writing. Maybe a particular section is proving trickier than I thought, maybe I’m too distracted, maybe I’m just not feeling motivated enough to tackle that particular section at this time. This could result in me going back to a writing planning exercise, moving onto a different writing task, or just accepting that I won’t get the whole paper done by the end of the day!

If I reach or exceed my writing goal, I feel good. I feel more confident that writing is something I can do, I feel less anxious and guilty that I’m not writing ‘enough’. Interestingly, I’ve now ‘maxed out’ my goals. I don’t push myself to do more words. I want to preserve the satisfaction I get from setting an achievable goal, and this increases my motivation to perform the writing behaviour more frequently.

Writing goals can be considered a bit marmite, but we think there is a strong behavioural case for them, and will be placing a fair bit of emphasis on them during our retreats. And of course, adding up your word count progress over the course of a full day and comparing this with your performance back at base will also highlight how much more productive you can be during a structured writing retreat when you are away from the everyday distractions we all face!