I have been writing a novel using open source tools and also openly at GitHub http://jj.github.io/hoborg. As an added value, I have data on each and every writing session: I know how many words were writing. I'm running some analysis on it, and found that writing session word deltas (number of words written in each writing session) follow a power law. Data is already shared in the GitHub repo but I'll share more with my conclusions, but it would be interesting to have some data to compare. Does anybody know if there's some data on this? Has anybody kept a log of, for instance, how many words were written in each session?
https://github.com/JJ/hoborg/blob/master/data/hoborg-word-deltas.png
As I see your graph, your additional word count drops off each day. I would attribute this to the greater complexity of the document as you progress. (You have to recheck characters, clothes, conditions .. previously written about etc.) I am not sure why your graph does not show days when there was no increase in activity. There is a paper in this, and you may be a pioneer.
You absolutely cannot generalize.
Eric Blair, for instance, wrote his masterpiece '1984' in 4 weeks flat - nonstop, never stopping nor taking a breather or even a nap, almost in a daze.
There are all kinds of cases - Tolkien, Neal Stephenson, etc. etc. The common thread is that there are all kinds of scenarios, and that each writer is unique.
Thanks a lot for your answers. I know I can't generalize, but that's why I'd like to see data on this, if it's been collected. Is there a power-law everywhere? Or just for indie writers? Maybe professional writers do follow a gaussian distribution?
Yes, but is there anything in common? Word per session distribution, would it follow a power law? Did you always do 500 words, or 1 time you did 3K and 100 times you did 30 words?
Not in my experience, but it would be interesting to see if that's a common pattern. And how it drops. :-)
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Computer Science
- Data Mining