How to write 10,000 words per day

Writing 200 words is a realistic goal for anyone willing to put 30 minutes aside. But when the writing starts taking a bigger part of your life, you are bound to increment your daily word count.

Why 10,000 words

I have 4 writing projects at the moment:

• Working as a technical writer at Embarque
• Writing every day on this website and on Twitter
• Creating a blog on sustainable web development
• Publishing another blog on sustainable digital nomadism.

I spent the last four days struggling to find time for each one, but I’m getting back in the rhythm: big goals, small steps. How far can I go? That’s what I’m wondering.

If you’re paid 10 cents for each word you write, 10,000 words amount to $1000. That’s a lot of value, but considering I’m trying to scale 4 projects, writing 5 articles of 2000 words each per day is not too far-fetched of an objective. You need both quality and quantity to cut through the ambient noise.

How to write 10,000 words per day

Using transcription software

How much can we write in a single day? The average person can type 40 words per minute (wpm). If we never stop typing for 24 hours, that’s 57,600 words.

If we use a speech-to-text software, we can leverage the human voice to write faster: 125 words per minute for an average person, amounting to 180,000 words per day speaking non-stop. 180,000 words per day is the theoretical limit, but I’ve never heard of a writer writing more than 10,000 words a day consistently.

A 10,000 word article is equivalent to 80 minutes of speech at 125 wpm. With practice, it’s a realistic goal. In practice, it doesn’t leave the average Joe much room to live his life.

Automating the writing process

What goes on into writing anyway?

1. Finding ideas
2. Creating an outline
3. Researching facts, statistics, or running experiments
4. Writing or voice-typing a story
5. Editing the noise out
6. Creating accompanying media (pictures, links, videos) whenever it’s relevant
7. Publishing

All these steps can be automated to some degree, but this topic will be for another post.

In the end, it turns out that writing 10,000 words is only a small part of the process. If the rest is done well, the actual writing is much smoother, but still, it takes way more than 2 hours per day to be done. I need more data to know how much exactly.

Documenting the findings

Standing in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day, I probably read a lot already. If I take up the habit of noting things down again I can probably increase my daily word count.

The word count isn’t the end-goal

Quantity isn’t quality, but it’s always better to write the first draft as fast as possible and spend more time editing. Even if I only manage to reach a fraction of 10,000 words on any given day, it’s still a lot more than most people on earth.

Stephen King writes 2000 words a day every morning and spends the rest of his time reading, exercising, doing errands, or spending time with his family. We can argue that writing fiction is less demanding than non-fiction, but writing is always about telling a story. What matters is sitting down at the desk with a good story in mind.

Progressively increasing my daily word count, just like a weightlifter gradually adding weight to her training regimen, is the most sustainable way to reach higher heights. I already know what I have to do, why I do it, and how to do it. Now, I have to ask myself better questions, write more, and read more to overcome the obstacles encountered during the journey. Let’s start today with this article.