Writing 1000 Words a Day Will Change Your Life
It’s no longer a secret.
Writing 1000 words a day will change your life.
Recently, I heard this podcast with Ali Abdaal and Nathan Barry, where they talked about the power of 1K per day.
I couldn’t agree more.
When we think about writing a book or any form of writing, it often seems like a lot.
How did they write a 250 page book?
We think, wondering what a gargantuan feat that is.
I feel the same way about architecture.
I was in Portugal recently and had a chance to visit Saint George’s Castle in Lisbon.
As I walked along the limestone parapets, it dawned on me that this was the same process as writing a novel (OK, maybe not the exact same, but you get the point).
It was a massive structure, built one piece at a time.
The castle probably took more planning, but the same principles applied.
Books are similar.
While not always constructed in the same linear fashion, large pieces are built one word, one paragraph, one page at a time.
You look at a gray hunk of stone, and there’s not much impressive about it.
The same goes for any one day’s 1k worth of writing.
Sitting on the page alone, it seems meager.
But as soon as you start piling those stones on top of each other, connecting them with mortar and sand, month after month, year after year, a structure begins taking shape.
This idea of compounding is challenging to fathom, yet it’s one of the most powerful ways I know how to create.
Think about it like this: 1000 words daily takes 30 minutes to an hour.
OK, cool.
The average 200-page book is about 60,000 words.
This means if you wrote 1K a day for one year straight, you could technically have enough material for about 6.5 books.
Is that realistic? Probably not, considering how long it takes to revise and re-work a manuscript.
But a book or two a year, depending on the genre and research required to write them, isn’t out of the question.
And if you wrote 2k a day, you could actually write your 60,000 manuscript in a month.
Would you be willing to dedicate an hour a day for a month if it meant you could finally write your book?
Of course.
So why don’t more of us do it?
I have a few theories.
#1 - People don’t know what to write about.
When I talk to writers (or people who want to write a book), this is the response I get most often.
Understandable.
It can be overwhelming because there’s too much to write about, or they suffer from writer’s block and don’t have enough to write about.
(If you suffer from the ladder, that’s precisely why I created my StorySpark course if you want to check it out.)
But even if people have their ideas clarified or feel their story is ready to spill out from inside, they still struggle to get it down.
Which is why I believe aspiring writers aren’t able to execute on their books.
Because of the second reason.
#2 - Accountability.
This is the piece that I find trips up most people.
Building a writing habit isn’t difficult, but it’s not easy.
Unless you’re super inspired, it can be tough to sit down every day, and even then, I still see people unable to do it.
I believe it’s because there has to be an underlying reason bigger than the idea of the completed book.
As much as we fantasize about having the finished product, it often isn’t enough motivation to keep us going.
There typically has to be something else.
A curiosity we’re following for ourselves…
A deadline we have to meet…
A promise we made…
This is why having editors, co-writers, and coaches can be so powerful.
Because we’re writing for someone other than us.
As soon as other people depend on us to produce, the power of social expectations kicks in.
It’s like having a personal trainer.
We can skip the gym until we know we have an appointment with a trainer or coach, especially someone we’ve paid money to already.
Loss aversion is a powerful motivator.
Having someone else counting on us is often enough to get us to follow through.
Then there are those select few who ride off their own internal motivation and can produce whether someone else is expecting us to show up or not.
And if that’s you, screw you (I’m just jealous, nbd).
The third reason I hear from folks who want to write but can’t seem to pull it off is one we all struggle with at one point or another.
#3 - Perfectionism.
There’s a desire to have everything planned perfectly before we start.
We want reassurance.
The security blanket to be laid out, ready to catch us before we leap.
Unfortunately, writing rarely works that way.
It’s less of a map and more of a compass.
You might not have the ending set in stone from the beginning, but every step forward you take gives you a little more feedback if you’re heading in the right direction.
All three roadblocks are motivated by different insecurities but achieve a similar result:
Procrastination.
Writing is a process that reveals itself to you as you go.
The only way through it is to do it.
The good news is, you don’t need to build your castle in a day.
Start small.
One brick.
500-1000 words.
They can be nonsense.
And hopefully, over time, they’ll eventually start to look like something more defined.
As someone who wrote for 450 days straight, let me be frank:
Most of it was terrible.
But momentum is real.
After revising and building upon ideas, slowly over time, the garbage heap became a finished work that I recently published as my first collection of essays.
We all can find 30 minutes a day if we make it a priority.
All it takes is 1K.
This article was mine.
Your turn.
Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
1. Creative Contact Free Newsletter: Practical tips each week guiding you from your first sentence to a finished manuscript.
2. The StorySpark Online Workshop: This quick and simple course will teach you the exact system I used to write for 450 days straight.
3. 1-on-1 Coaching: If you need a little extra accountability and guidance to bring your book to life. Let’s talk.