Yesterday I spoke about finding your pace and sticking to it, and today I would like to elaborate on that idea. We’ve had a crazy amount of wild stats in my country this year. Port Elizabeth Region is currently sitting at number one with it’s average number of words per person, my region’s at number 6. We’ve had a whole bunch of people shoot out from the rest, putting up word counts three/four times more than they should have (yours truly shamefully included). Its impressive, and it can be intimidating.
I’ve noticed that some of the people have been comparing themselves to these over achievers and feeling terribly inadequate about their (on target) word counts that they have been posting. I would like to tell you now that there’s no need for that.
Like I’ve said before, we all have our own pace. Some of us can comfortably write 10k words a day where as others are comfortable to push for 1700 words per say. The thing is that we all have different experience and different skills My saving grace for instance is that I can type very quickly with all ten fingers. Some people write by hand, and that takes a very long time. Naturally, I’m going to be able to go quicker than the person writing his/her book in ink. It makes my effort no more greater than theirs and my word count no more superior. What’s more, some of us (like myself) write whether it’s NaNoWriMo or not. It makes us more comfortable with writing and juggling our characters where as those who do this only once a year needs a little bit more practice and rhythm to get back into the swing of things.
The thing is that (biggest cliché in the world to be stated right now) we are all unique and we have unique goals.
Mine at this stage is to try and oblivirate Port Elizabeth’s average word count, but (lol) that’s personal. 😉
Stay by your own goals and don’t be intimidated by others. Remember you have to do this at your own pace, otherwise you will burn yourself out and then you’ll be of no use to anybody. J
Happy Writing people.
Alyss
Alyssa's Blog 
Nicely put!
There are other factors that affect the word count too, including the time per day one can put aside to write and the quality they strive for (I don’t care what NaNoWriMo says, making the word count doesn’t satisfy me in and of itself.)
So the question everyone should ask themselves is: Are you proud of what you accomplished? Other people don’t matter. You matter. 😉