Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

27Set a Goal Based on Word Count (Not Time)

You can't improve what you don't measure is the old management maxim highlighting data's vital relationship to effectiveness. It's sometimes attributed to Peter Drucker and sometimes to statistician William Edwards Deming (although neither actually said it—but that's a conversation for another day).

In writing, measuring effectiveness might be more nuanced: I'd rather produce 500 awesome words than 10,000 terrible ones, for example. Nonetheless, putting some goals and metrics in place has value for anyone who wants to become a more agile and hale writer.

But make sure you measure your writing in output (words) rather than in effort expended (time). Staring at an empty page for half an hour doesn't count, nor does half an hour of really good thinking, for that matter (at least in this case). In other words (specifically, Yoda's): “There is no try, there is only do.”

That approach is especially useful if you are working on a large writing project—such as a white paper, e-book, or video script. What specific number you choose for your daily writing goal is entirely arbitrary; you set your own benchmark.

As I've said, everybody writes: Type an email recently? Submit a report? Respond to a tweet? So if you want to be a writer, you already are. “You're in if you want to be,” says writer and photographer Dane Sanders.

Not that long ago, Dane produced two books in the same year for Random House. Both books became best sellers. He'd always ...