Every January the hand-wringing begins: What are my writing goals for the coming year? How can I boost my productivity? Why do some writers write ten times more words per day/week/year than I do?

But do they, really? Here’s a round-up of some of our most prolific bestselling authors—and how many words a day they really write….

“I don’t write every day. I try to write eight pages a week. As long as I make my eight pages a week, I feel pretty good, like I’m putting a dent in it.”

–Colson Whitehead

“I try to write a thousand words a day and have to be very disciplined about it because I’m quite lazy. So I get up early, before anyone else, and start work.”

–Louise Penny

“If you think about having to write 75,000 words – 200 pages – you’ll freak yourself out. But if you write 1,000 words a day, you can finish the first draft of a novel in less than three months, even if you take some weekend days off.”

–Joseph Finder

“I always wake up very early – around 5:30am – and make myself tea. Then, I sit at my kitchen table until I’ve written about 1,200 or 1,500 words.”

–Ann Cleeves

“I normally start writing a novel on January the first of each year… I get a lot of writing done in January, February, March, for obvious reasons, it’s a good time to write…. On a good day, I’ll write probably 2000 words. On a slow day, probably 1000.”

–John Grisham

“I try to write every day and to do 1,000 words a day. It doesn’t always work out like that but, on the whole, I’m quite productive. I like to do my 1,000 words in the morning so that I can do other stuff in the afternoon.”

–Elly Griffiths

“…how many words a day I write, the answer is that I have no idea…I just kind of tell the story. I’ve been quoted as saying that if you’re counting your words and not listening to those words, you are kind of missing the point—kind of like watching the odometer rather than the passing scenery.”

–Craig Johnson

“…I figure out when I want to finish the book, or more likely when I have to turn it in. Then I do a spreadsheet that tells me how many words I need to write each day to make my deadline.”

–Donna Andrews

“I need 100,000 words. It’s about momentum, how you get it, how you keep it. I gather characters, situations, pieces of dialogue. It starts very minimalistic, a few hours a day then to however many hours a day, 14 to 16 hours.” 

–Michael Connelly

“I’ll be writing about 2,000 words a day to start with, then 4-5,000 words a day as the story progresses. The most I’ve ever written in one day was 11,500 words but that was a total one off.”

–Val McDermid

“I start by re-reading what I wrote the day before, smoothing it out, maybe changing a word or two, maybe adding or deleting commas and so on, and I use that momentum to launch into the next bit. I aim for 1500 words a day. Sometimes 400 seems a big achievement, sometimes I blaze through 4000.”

–Lee Child