The short answer is 2,000 words, every single day, including holidays. But the reason people keep arguing about whether it's 1,000 or 2,000 is that King gave us both numbers himself, in the same book, and they mean different things.

The Direct Answer
2,000 words per day (goal). 1,000 words per day (floor).
Both figures come from On Writing (Scribner, 2000). The 2,000 is what he's aiming for. The 1,000 is the minimum he'll accept before stopping. He writes 365 days a year.

What King Actually Says in On Writing

The passage that settles this is in the "On Writing" section of the book. King writes: "I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. Sloppy math, but it's close enough." Ten manuscript pages, double-spaced, standard margins. He's not being precious about the exact count; he just knows roughly how much ground he covers in a good session, and that's the number he shoots for.

A few pages earlier, he also writes: "The minimum wage for a working writer should be a thousand words a day." That's where the 1,000 figure comes from. It's a floor, not a target. King uses "minimum wage" deliberately: it's the least you can do and still call this a writing day. If you hit 1,000 and your brain is gone, you've done the job. If you can push to 2,000, you push. The two numbers coexist because they serve different purposes in his mind.

What he's describing is a system with a target and a safety net. The 2,000 keeps you ambitious on good days. The 1,000 keeps you in the chair on bad ones.

Every Day, No Exceptions

The word count matters less than the daily part. King has been clear across multiple interviews and in the book itself that he writes 365 days a year. Christmas, his birthday, the Fourth of July. The logic is practical rather than macho: if you skip days, the characters go cold. The fictional world you're living in while you're drafting needs to stay warm, and the way you keep it warm is by returning to it every morning without exception.

At 2,000 words a day, 365 days a year, that's 730,000 words annually. A standard thriller novel runs 80,000 to 100,000 words. Run the math and you get roughly seven to nine finished first drafts per year, which is not far off from King's actual output across his career. He's published over 65 novels. He started publishing in 1974. That's more than one book a year for five decades, and the daily 2,000 is exactly how you do it.

What This Means for Your Own Writing

The lesson isn't "write 2,000 words a day." Most writers can't sustain that, and most writers aren't Stephen King. The lesson is the structure behind the number: a daily target that you genuinely try to hit, and a floor below which you refuse to stop. The specific counts are less important than having both.

If 2,000 words is too much, try 500 as your target and 200 as your floor. The floor is the protection against the days when everything feels wrong and you want to quit at the first paragraph. Knowing you only have to get to 200 before you've "earned" a stop usually means you end up writing past it. That's the trick. King's floor isn't a permission slip to underperform; it's a psychological mechanism to keep you in the chair through the hard start.

"The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better."

Stephen King, On Writing

The other thing worth taking from King's setup is how he treats the floor. He doesn't celebrate hitting 1,000 words. He keeps writing. The floor exists to stop him from quitting at 800 on a bad day, not to give him an early finish. Once you've passed the floor, the momentum usually carries you toward the target anyway. That's the whole point of having both numbers.

For the complete picture of King's writing day, including his desk setup, his music rules, the reading list he maintains, and how he handles the first draft versus revision, see the full Stephen King writing routine page.

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