What You Need to Know About Word Count

May 1, 2019 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

Today, I wanted to talk to you about word count. Like many others at the moment, I’m reading Rachel Hollis’ new book, Girl, Stop Apologizing, and one of the things she talks about is her super-human-powered focus when it comes to writing (as well as, um, pretty much everything else). She focuses on word count, cranking out something like 2500 words per writing session. (2500 words is 10 pages,) To do this, she removes herself from all distractions, writing in a coffee shop, and she cranks it out. To be clear, I’m not saying that you should be writing that much—not by any stretch. (More on this one in a sec.) I’m using her story as an example, since I’ve been hearing so much about word count lately, and I’m guessing you have, too. So what’s the skinny? Is focusing on word count […]

Should You Abandon Your Project or Keep Going?

August 15, 2018 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

Almost every writer I’ve spoken to recently is either a) feeling stuck, b) wondering whether they should abandon their project, c) ready to run for the border or d) all of the above. This is the first in a three-part blog series to help you figure out whether or not to continue your project and help you get unstuck. How to Decide Whether to Abandon Your Project or Keep Going As we talked about in the last post, writing crossroads often happen over summer, especially for those of us with kids. Even if you don’t have kids at home, summer tends to throw us writers off track. How do we pick up the thread of that project that we were once so excited about, we wonder. Does that damn project even still matter? What if we’ve missed the boat? Lost our friggin mojo?! […]