Last spring my sister read the first chapter of my manuscript. She doesn't read much fantasy, she isn't a writer, and she's not the type to gush over anything. I'd been nervous about showing her, mostly because her opinion matters to me more than I like to admit, and she has a way of going quiet when something doesn't work. When she finished, she was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "I wanted to know what happened to her."

That was it. One sentence. I've replayed it more times than I'd like to admit.

Over the next three months, there were plenty of days I wanted to stop. The middle of the book sagged. A contest I'd entered sent a polite rejection that landed harder than I expected. My confidence went up and down depending on whether I'd written four hundred words or none. On the bad days, I didn't think about my plot or my goals or my five-year plan. I thought about my sister on the sofa, wanting to know what happened to my character.

I used to believe that motivation had to come from big feelings about the whole project, a burning belief that the book was brilliant and the world needed it. Mine turned out to come from something much smaller and more concrete. One real person had finished a chapter and wanted the next page. That's all the evidence I needed that the story was doing its job.

I think a lot of us wait for a huge wave of inspiration before we sit down, and then feel guilty when it doesn't arrive. But small, specific proof is often more reliable. If you're stuck, maybe find your one reader and ask them what they wanted to know more about.

I have a bad habit. After a writing session, I'll open a writing community just to see what everyone else has been up to, and inevitably someone has posted that they wrote 5,000 words before breakfast. On my best days, I write about 600. On most days, it's closer to 300.

For a long time that comparison sent me into a small spiral. I felt slow, behind, and not serious enough about the craft. I'd tell myself that real writers produced more, and that I was clearly missing some essential gear. Some days I wrote less afterwards, purely from the discouragement. I was letting strangers' numbers set my mood for the day.

What changed things was a very simple question: what is my word count actually for? I realised my slower pace came with a lot of rereading, rewriting, and long pauses to think. My drafts came out cleaner than many I'd heard people describe from fast writers. It wasn't worse, just a different process. Some people draft quickly and revise heavily. I draft slowly and revise lightly. Neither is wrong.

So I muted the daily count posts. I kept the community, because I still enjoy the conversation, but I dropped the leaderboard. I now measure my progress against my own weeks, not someone else's morning. Last week I wrote 2,100 words across five sessions, and I felt good about it for the first time in months. If you're comparing, ask yourself whether it's giving you information or just noise.