Go Big Or Go Home. Write One Million Words a Year

I’ve been reading a lot of articles and blog posts lately about goals that writers have and how much writing they plan to do in the next year. And it’s all fascinating reading, not to mention inspiring and motivating.

But there was one blog post in particular that really caught my attention. It was written by prolific fiction author, Dean Wesley Smith. He talked about his goal to write 2.2 million words in 2022.

 https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/my-2022-challenge/.  

My flabber was ghasted when I read that. This is such a huge challenge he’s set for himself.

In a previous post, he’d talked in-depth about pulp writing speed which is how pulp writers used to earn their living years ago what was then called pulp fiction, because they were only paid by word count so they had to write at super speeds to be able to write for a living.

https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/pulp-speed-brought-forward-again/

In this blog post, he goes through six different pulp writing speeds, and the slowest one (Pulp Speed One) is 1 million words a year, and while that may sound like a lot, it breaks down like this:

Writing 3,000 words a day, is 84,000 words a month (26 days), which adds up to just over 1 million words a year. And if you can write 1,000 words an hour (which isn’t hard), 3,000 words a day is easy.

This all got me thinking about how much more I can write in a year if I really tried. 

To be realistic, I’ll have to divide my time and include everything I do, not just writing, but also sleeping, travelling, eating, cleaning, personal hygiene, family, TV, and everything else besides.

Plus I need to look at what writing I plan to do in the next 12 months, including books, ebooks, free reports, blog posts, articles, and freelance assignments.

Will I make it to one million words a year?

Who knows.

But I’m going to having great fun trying.

https://amzn.to/2YbtGyw