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| Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash |
A few weeks ago I was reading an article about how it’s possible to write a million words a years, and I thought, “That’s crazy.”
But it turns out it’s not as crazy say you think. Not only is it quite sane, it’s also quite do-able.
The author also said that we all write at the same pace, which is around 1,000 words/hour, which is only 16.6666 words per minute.
I pondered this, did a little math, and worked out that one million words divided by 365 days is 2,739 words a day. So if you wrote 2,739 words a day for a whole year, you’d have written 1,000,000 words.
Hmmm. It doesn’t seem too unreasonable when you look at it like that.
So then I went back to the 1,000 words/hour. To write a million words at that speed, you’d have to write for 1,000 hours (1,000 x 1,000 = 1,000,000).
This means that if you wrote 1,000 wph for 2 hours a day, that’s 2,000 words a day which isn’t far off the 2,739 words a day needed to write a million words a year. In fact, 2,000 words a day is 730,000 words a year.
But what if you upped the ante and wrote 10,000 words a day? Even working a 5 day week you could achieve 50,000 words a week. That’s a whole book written in a week.
But is it possible to write 10,000 words a day?
According to the book, “2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love” By Rachel Aaron (https://amzn.to/3ruC0bd) it’s more than possible.
At 1,000 word/hour you’d have to write for 10 hours a day. That’s a lot of hours.
But look at it a different way.
If you’ve ever tried speed writing you’ll know that it’s possible to write ¾ of a page in 5 minutes. Speed writing is where you’re given a writing prompt, or 3 words, you set a timer for 5 minutes and start writing. If you’ve never done it, you should. It’s really eye-opening to see just how much you’re capable for writing in such a short time.
Speed writing proves that it’s easily possible to write ¾ of a page in 5 minutes. So assuming a full page of writing is 300 words (it’s usually more), this means that you can write 2,700 words in an hour (¾ of a page in 5 minutes x 12 lots of 5 minutes = 1 hour).
If you write like this for 5 hours a day, even if you drop the speed down to 2,000 words an hour, that’s still 10,000 words a day.
But the real question is whether or not it’s possible to write at this fast pace.
It is if you’re prepared. This means having a complete outline for your book so that you know exactly what you’ll be covering in each chapter.
Having a detailed outline leaves you free to write without stopping, just like speed writing.
An outline means you don’t need thinking time, just writing time.
I work this way with all my books. Lately I’ve begun using shorter outlines, and while it’s possible to write a book this way, it slows me down because it means I need to have time to think while I’m writing.
But with a detailed outline, I can sit down and start writing straight away. Even if it’s been a day or two since I last wrote, I can look at my outline and see exactly where I finished and where I need to go.
Outlines make the writing process so much easier and faster.
And it only takes 2 to 3 days to go from idea to outline to detailed outline, and then you’re ready to start writing.
And even if you want to slow it down to just 10,000 words a week, you can still get your book finished in a month.
I wrote about this in the 4th book of my Monthly Challenge Writing Series, “The One Month Author: How to Write a Book Faster & Better.”
A simple step-by-step manual that leads you through finding an idea for a book, creating an outline, and turning it into a finished manuscript - in just one month.
Check it out now at:
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