Why Quantity Is More Important Than Quality for Writers

The key to writing better? Write more

You may have read or been told somewhere the adage that quality is more important than quantity. It sounds like sound advice. After all, given the chance, would you pen a hundred stories no one reads or this year’s most popular novel? It’s better to focus on crafting the masterpiece, right? However, once you start to dig a little deeper, it becomes clear that this kind of thinking is flawed.

While it might seem like quality and quantity are at odds with each other, they are intrinsically related. Indeed, you can’t have the former without the latter. Moreover, for multiple reasons, writers, especially newer writers, are actually better off focusing on the amount of writing they do instead of how good it is.

Let’s talk about why that is.

Quality requires quantity

Malcolm Gladwell famously hypothesized that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become world-class in any field. In reality, it may take more or less hours, but the key idea behind it — that you must put many hours in to become an expert at something — holds true across multiple disciplines.

Consider, for instance, the process of learning an instrument. Early on, you have to spend a lot of time making awful noise until you start to get the hang of things. Of course, the crucial thing is to be deliberate. You can’t just hit the strings of a guitar and hope to become the next Jimi Hendrix. Instead, you keep practicing the scales and chords and imitating the greats.

Learning to write works in the same manner. But instead of practicing chords, scales, and songs, you’re practicing things like plot lines, word choices, and character development. Sure, you can learn lots from reading and studying, but it’s only by writing lots that you ultimately learn how to write well.

Quantity is measurable

Quality is a difficult thing to measure. You can look at the stats of a recent blog post, the level of acceptance or rejection letters you get from publishers, or even the amount of money you’ve earned from your craft. But ultimately, good writing is subjective.

On the other hand, you can measure quantity in several ways. For instance, you can see the number of words you’ve penned in a word processor or the number of pages you’ve filled in a book. You can also measure the number of blog posts you have published or the number of short stories or poems you’ve written. You can also add up the number of hours put into researching or editing an article.

In other words, while you may not be able to assess quality, you can always assess whether you’ve put in the work by analyzing quantity.

Quantity increases your chance of writing something great

Discussing the subject of quality vs quantity, Joe Bunting of The Write Practice makes a poignant analogy about a class split into two by a teacher. As his story goes, the teacher tells one half to produce 50 pots, and the other to create one perfect one. The expectation is that the pupils focusing on perfection will make the best product. However, the opposite proves true. The reasoning is that the students who made 50 pots were better able to learn from their mistakes.

During a 2001 keynote speech, the prolific author and writer Ray Bradbury suggested a similar thing happens with writing. He argued that, rather than trying to write one perfect novel, newer writers should attempt to write 52 short stories over a year. He reasoned that instead of trying to perfect one story and failing, writing many shorter stories would give writers more practice constructing them. He also figured that at least one of these stories would be worth sharing since “it’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

He also suggested that quantity was vital when it came to reading, suggesting that writers should aim to read at least one essay, one short story and one poem every evening:

Quantity builds consistency

One interesting side effect of focusing on quantity over quality is that it forces writers out of their comfort zones. If you make yourself write three pages of fiction or publish a blog post every day, then there’s no time for pesky things like perfectionism. Instead, you get used to producing raw ideas on the spot, especially when you practice in public.

Many writers get stuck never publishing anything of note because they fear getting it wrong. They worry that they’ll pen a story that isn’t very good or about receiving a rejection letter from an editor. Meanwhile, writers who write, publish, and submit work often will inevitably learn to take more risks. They’re less likely to fear rejection or a blank page, let alone what others think of them. Instead, they use feedback as a means of getting better quicker and are less likely to be stumped by writer’s block.

Finding the balance

To be clear, quality is still the end goal of any writer. The reason you want to focus on quantity instead is that it is the fastest means of getting to the point where you can regularly produce quality.

Ultimately, the important thing is to embrace a learning mindset. Instead of fearing rejection, look for opportunities to receive feedback. Rather than stress over perfecting one story, learn the tools you need to write a perfect tale by writing hundreds of them. In the end, by focusing on quantity you’ll end up producing far more quality than any perfectionist ever could.

This article was originally published at https://hobbylark.com