Atwood has put a loose number on a productive day, and it sits in a range rather than a single figure. She's also clear that the number moves, and that some days the words come and some days they don't.
A Range, Not a Quota
Asked what counts as productive, Atwood named a span rather than a hard target: somewhere between a thousand and two thousand words. The looseness is the point. She doesn't write to hit an exact figure the way some authors lock themselves to a number, and her output rises and falls with the book, the day, and how much travel is eating her time. A good day lands in that band. A bad one doesn't, and she doesn't pretend otherwise. Compared with the writers who swear by a sacred 500 or a flat 1,000, her range gives her a floor to clear and permission to keep going when the work is hot.
It helps to remember that a lot of those words start as longhand. She drafts by hand with a pen that glides easily over the page, on paper with wide-spaced lines because her handwriting runs fast, then types it up later. So her daily count folds in both the messy first pass and the cleaner transcription. The number is real work, not just keystrokes, and the act of retyping doubles as a first edit. Words that looked fine in pencil get quietly fixed on the way into the machine.
Why the Number Moves
Atwood doesn't outline her way to a fixed daily yield. She prefers to start without a map and find the book as she goes, which means some days produce a flood and others a trickle. When you don't know exactly what scene is coming, you can't promise yourself a tidy word count for it.
Never map it out. Just get into it. Jump in, like going swimming.
Margaret Atwood, on getting started
That discovery method makes a rigid quota beside the point. The aim is to keep moving and keep the reader, and herself, interested, not to grind out an identical tally every day. Some scenes arrive in order, she's said, and some show up all over the place, and you write them as they come. For how those words fit into her day, see Atwood's writing routine, and the bigger picture lives on the full Margaret Atwood writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Set a range, not a wall. A thousand to two thousand gives you a floor and room to overshoot.
- Count the messy draft. Longhand pages are progress, even before they're typed.
- Forgive the off days. Even Atwood's number swings, so a low day isn't failure.