How to Write 10,000 Words a Day and Why It’s the Worst Idea
It’s not worth it but here’s how to test it for yourself
Back in 2012, author Rachel Aaron published 2,000 to 10,000: How to Write Faster, Write Better, and Write More of What You Love.
Before July, I didn’t know what my daily average word count was. I was inconsistent but assumed my average must have been around 500 words on a good day. I needed it to be more than that.
I heard about this book, bought it immediately, and devoured it in 30 minutes. I was sceptical — and the number of typos did not boost my confidence — but I was willing to keep an open mind.
Rachel Aaron’s advice is so simple it should be obvious, but sometimes you need someone to tell you how to do a thing before you can do it.
The Big Secret to Improving Your Word Output
Rachel Aaron’s technique is threefold:
Knowledge
If you want to write more, you need to know what you’re going to be writing before you start.
For article writers, this step means creating an outline. Derek Hughes has a great article to help you with that.
For fiction writers, it means taking at least five minutes at the start of every writing session to brainstorm the ins and outs of the scenes you’re planning to write during that session. A quick and vague description, like “Luke goes to buy a droid”, isn’t going to be enough.
Time
Figure out when your best writing times are. You can do this by setting up a spreadsheet that includes start time, end time, and your achieved word count.
It took me a couple of weeks to figure out that I’m a more efficient writer in the morning when I work for 25-minute blocks with 5-minute breaks in between.
Enthusiasm
You’ll write faster and enjoy the experience more if you’re excited by what you’re about to write. It may be worth giving yourself a pep talk as you sit down and get to work.
If you don’t find the scene or article exciting, your readers probably won’t either.
How This Worked For Me
I’m a baby and dug in my heels. Reading about it was fine and felt productive, but changing how I did things took a bit of mental effort and preparation.
The Result
It works. On my first day, I wrote a little over 8,000 words in under 7 hours. I increased that to 11,000 in the same time frame on my second day.
The experiment ended there for me, but I could have kept going. The way Rachel Aaron’s tips work makes writing fun to the point where even a huge word output doesn’t feel draining.
The Negative
What did feel draining was the editing of those 19,000 words. Cleaning up that section took me double the time it usually would and gave me three days worth of headaches.
It was a mess, even with a detailed scene outline, because my focus was on the quantity of words rather than their quality.
The Solution
I took what worked and stopped pushing myself to write as much as I could.
I figured out what my comfortable average word count is: 200 words per 25 minutes. Add in the 5-minute breaks, and that means it takes me 5 hours to write 2,000 words.
Those 2,000 words are good, not perfect, but easily edited. Say I want to write a 90,000-word book, it would take me 45 days the get the first draft.
Rachel Aaron taught me to consistently find writing time in my day and enjoy the act of writing. I haven’t sat sadly looking at a blank document since July because of her.
She also taught me to know my numbers — my writer’s stats — so that I can understand under what conditions I’m most efficient and happiest.
Perhaps if I’d stuck with trying for 10,000 words a day, the quality of my output would have improved. Maybe it gets better with practice, but I usually like editing, and I didn’t enjoy the experience of hating it.
So 2K a day is my number. What’s yours?
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