@Dex Stewart
I’ve written two books, the last one in 2014 which was 82,000 words (handwritten in minuscule print on every square inch of 51 sheets of paper, some of which were cut up, rearranged, and taped back together) that was written in 79 days, with about 10 days of prep time in 2010 when I came up with the story and outlined it. That comes to about 1,044 words per day, which is about as fast as I’m writing this new book. One day when I get the time I will edit that book and self publish it after the election book.
The most I’ve in a single day is about 4,500 words for my 2015 essay on the Resurrection. I wrote that in 8 hours. During the first 4 hours I listened to the song
Echelon on endless loop. Despite outliers like that I’m only really productive for 2 or 3 hours a day. When I write I really enter a trance and it’s like watching a movie and I’m just taking dictation. It is extremely difficult to enter that state, very easy to come out of it, and it’s really the only time I ever feel alive. It’s the only time I don’t feel like a robot trapped in a world of zombies.
I wrote most of my 2016 election essay, which was 5,300 words, in a single day and didn’t sleep for 60 hours. And thank God I did because that essay is the first chapter of the new book and makes up 1/3 of its current length. I’d be totally dead in the water if I hadn’t been keeping a diary for 9 years and had a lot of this stuff already written, I just need to edit it and arrange it properly.