Book writing planner: how much to write every day
You enter the length of the book, the deadline and your working days, and the tool turns "I want to write a book" into a single number: how many words to write today. Then a second number, more important than the first: whether that plan fits into the hours you actually have. Usually it does not — and it is better to learn that at the start than three weeks before the deadline.
The book
A mid-length novel runs 70,000–100,000 words. Non-fiction runs 35,000–60,000. A manuscript page counts as 250 words; characters convert at 5.8 per word, which depends on the language and is only an approximation.
Dates
Your pace
Your daily quota
What if the plan slips
| Scenario | Working days | Words per day | Hours per day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fill in the length and the deadline to see the scenarios. | |||
The calculation runs in your browser. The date comes from your device clock rather than the network, and you can override it.
A daily quota is arithmetic, not a promise. It accounts for neither revisions nor the days when the writing will not come. Leave yourself slack: a plan costed day for day breaks at the first cold.
How the daily quota is calculated
Everything is converted to words first, because that is the unit a writing pace is measured in. A manuscript page counts as 250 words — the standard page of a double-spaced 12 pt typescript — so that conversion is exact by definition. Characters with spaces are divided by 5.8, the average length of an English word plus the space after it; that one is an approximation, because the characters-to-words ratio depends on the language and the style. Ukrainian and Russian prose runs closer to 6.5 characters per word, so a character target pasted from a Ukrainian manuscript will read high. Then the remainder is taken: target minus what is written. Next come the working days — not every day up to the deadline, only the weekdays you ticked, from today (or from the start date if it is in the future) to the deadline inclusive. Your planned days off are subtracted from that number. The remainder divided by the working days is the daily quota. Your actual capacity is worked out separately: hours per day × words per hour. If the quota is larger than the capacity, the tool says plainly by how much the plan overshoots and how many hours a day you would have to find. And one more date: where your current pace leads. The tool simply walks forward through the calendar, adding your capacity for every working day until the remainder is covered. If that date is later than the deadline, you see by how many days.
How many words per hour an author writes
500 words per hour is a steady drafting pace, for when you know what you are writing about and are not editing as you go. That is the default reference point. 1000 words per hour is fast typing against a finished outline, with no fact-checking and no revisions. That pace holds for an hour or two, no more. 200–300 words per hour is normal for non-fiction where every paragraph has to be checked against a source, and for a first book, before the habit is there. Measure your own pace instead of guessing: set a timer for 30 minutes, write without stopping, double the result. That number will be more honest than any average from the internet.
How many words are in a book
A mid-length novel runs 70,000–100,000 words, which is 280–400 standard manuscript pages and roughly 230–330 pages of a finished trade paperback. Agents and publishers take debut novels more readily at the lower end. Non-fiction and practical guides run 35,000–60,000 words, or 140–240 manuscript pages. Here the topic dictates the length: an instruction manual stretched to 90,000 words tires the reader faster than it helps. A novella runs 20,000–50,000 words. An ebook lead magnet given away for a subscription runs 8,000–15,000 words, and that is genuinely writable in two or three weeks. One thing to keep in mind: a draft always has more words than the book. Expect the length to drop by 10–20% after revisions and plan the draft with room to spare.
What the planner does not do
It does not count time for revisions, proofreading, working with an editor or a copy editor. That is a separate stage, and it often takes as long as the draft itself. It does not know your holidays or family commitments: all it can do is subtract the number of days off you give it. Be generous with that number. It does not take dates from the network. Today's date is read from your device clock and you can override it by hand — to cost out a plan in advance, for instance. And the main point: a daily quota is arithmetic, not a promise. It knows nothing about the days when the writing will not come. A plan costed day for day with no slack breaks at the first cold.