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I've got a 40h, full-time job, as many do. Yet I'd like to become a writer someday, or at least, bring a novel through the first draft.

This considered, I'm trying to give myself a daily target of 1000 words to write each day at least. I'm starting to find that I work best under some kind of stress, or commitment.
On the days that I reach the goal, I'm usually satisfied and I feel a small boost in motivation, so let's say this method is working for me.

Now, the question for you is this: is writing 1000 words a day a reasonable pace for a part-time writer dealing with his first draft?

The assumption here is to maximize commitment to a single novel in order to finish the first draft sooner (in months, rather than a year or years).

Related, but not overlapping:
Time management for part-time writing

Just do the math. Although it varies by genre, from about 80,000 to 120,000 (epic fantasy with lots of world-building), 1000 a day means 80 to 120 days. So about three or four months for a first draft. About the time I take myself.

Personally, I set aside 90 minutes every morning (my best time to write) to write, and use Orson Scott Card's advice: You don't have to write in that time, but you can't do anything else. No surfing the net or commenting on blogs, no outside reading (though reading what you have written is fine), just sit there and stare at the screen or do writerly duties; new prose or editing or thinking about your story. The time commitment is what counts, and eventually the work will get done. You can only stare at the screen for five or ten minutes before boredom forces you to write something.

But I don't commit to a word-count; I can guarantee an amount of time but not an amount of productivity. (As a discovery writer, some days I am stuck on choosing the right next scene, and spend the whole time re-reading and trying to figure that out. I might write notes about what I thought about. But I don't feel bad, I put in my 90.)

There are many factors that would affect whether 1000 words a day is realistic for you or not. E.g.:

• Do you do overtime?


• How long is your commute to/from work?
  
  
  
  
  • Can you use the commute time for writing?
  
  
  
  


• What else do you have to do other than working? Do you have a spouse? Children? Must you do the grocery shopping, the cooking, the cleaning?


• How long does it take you to clear your head from work, chores etc., and "get in the zone" - be ready to write? Can you jump right in, or do you need some extra time first?

All those would affect how much time you have that is really free for writing.

Next is the writing itself:

• Do you need to do research for your story, while you're writing it?


• Is it all plotted out, or do you discover it as you go, sometimes sitting and thinking which one of several choices would be most interesting?


• Do you always know what your character would say, or do you know your character would make a joke, but spend half a day looking for the right one?
  
  
  
  
  • related: can you think of your writing while at work / doing chores / etc., or do those things demand your focus?
  
  
  
  

Which is to say, an average of 1000 words a day might or might not be realistic, depending on many many factors. For myself, some days I do several pages with ease, things just flow, while other days I write and rewrite a single scene, and yet other days I have no time to touch my writing at all. For me, 1000 words a day is not currently realistic. I wish it were. Maybe your circumstances are different, and you can make it happen.

You're in good company. Ian McEwan writes 600 words a day.

So yes, a thousand words a day is perfectly fine. But of course what is a reasonable pace for you will depend on what you want to achieve. McEwan tortures himself over 600 words of the most refined prose in the same time that Michael Crichton cranks out 10,000 words of bestselling popular fiction. If you consider the daily word counts of some famous authors you may come to the conclusion that maybe

• literary quality correlates negatively with daily word count, while


• sales and riches correlated positively with daily word count.

You decide.

It kind of depends on the quality of your writing. Because if you pump out 365,000 words a year, but they aren't high quality words, then it ultimately doesn't get you closer to publishing (if that is your goal; I'm assuming it is since this site is aimed at professionals). The good news is is that the longer you write, the better you will get; and 1000 words a day is a good stretch; but, I've found that with that word goal target I don't quite get to my best. My actual goal with a 50 hour a week job is 1500, but I usually only hit 700-800. My best writing days see 2-3k words. Otherwise I don't get very deep.

It's generally good advice, as contrary as this may sound, to favor quantity over quality if you're trying get better.

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the
class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he
said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced,
all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in
his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty
pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being
graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit
a perfect one – to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of
highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for
quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning
out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality”
group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little
more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of
dead clay.

Yes this is a great exercise. That's exactly what Stephen King advises in his audio book "On writing".

He explains that, in order to improve you have to practice, but also to maintain your level and 1000 words a day is the good level. This way of doing work in other fields, by the way.

Whatever content it produces, you should commit to that.