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Free tool

Writing pace calculator

A target, a date and the days you actually write. This gives you the daily number, then tells you what it becomes if you miss a week.

Words a writing day

690 about 40 minutes at the desk
Left to write
78,000 words
Writing days between now and then
113
Calendar weeks
22
If you miss a week
727 a day
At 1,000 a day instead, you finish
12 March 2027

This runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and there is no account to make.

How the daily number is worked out

Words left divided by writing days left. The only honest part is the second number, and it is the one most planners get wrong by counting calendar days instead of the days you are actually at the desk.

Time at the desk assumes 700 words an hour of first draft. That is a comfortable steady rate for prose you have thought about beforehand. A very fast drafter does double it. Nobody sustains double.

The missed week is the point of this. A week off does not cost a week of words, it raises every remaining day, and if the new number is one you have never hit then the date has already moved and you have not admitted it yet.

Galley tracks the count against a goal as you write, and keeps the streak without making it a game you can lose. See goals and streaks.

For working things out, not for signing anything. Printers and retailers set their own rates and specifications, change them without notice, and none of them is affiliated with me or with Galley. I last checked this page in August 2026. Confirm on the official page before you commit money to a price, a print run or a contract.

Questions

How many words a day should I write?

Enough to finish. A 90,000 word first draft in six months, writing five days a week, is 690 words a day, which is about forty minutes. The number that fails is the one you set on a good day and cannot hold on a bad one.

How long does it take to write a novel?

At 1,000 words on five days a week, a 90,000 word draft takes about eighteen weeks. Most people take longer, because sometimes, life happens.

What does missing a week actually cost?

More than a week, because the target rises for every day left. This shows you the new daily number so you can decide whether to write more each day or move the date. Those are the only two options, and pretending otherwise is how deadlines quietly pass.

Is a daily word count the right way to work?

It suits a first draft, where the job is volume. It suits revision badly, where a good day might be minus 2,000 words. Switch to time at the desk once you are rewriting.

Next

Word count by genreWhether the target is the right target. Reading time calculatorWhat the finished thing costs a reader. Words to printed pagesWhat it becomes as a book. Readability checkerWhat the words you wrote today look like.

More at the resources index.

Put all this into practice when you write your novel in Galley.

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