Daily Writing Compounds: How To Write A Lot

200 words. Not enough to fill a blank screen. Too insignificant to have an impact. Or does it?

A year has 365 days. If you write 200 words every day consistently for a year, you get yourself a whooping 73,000 words.

It is assumed a non-fiction book is about 250 words per page, so you can write about 292 pages in a single year.

1600 words is the optimal blog post length according to the publishing platform Medium. Do you write 45 quality blog posts a year yet?

Writing and publishing are two distinct things indeed, but it’s not so much about looking good at first―it’s about pushing your creative limits as a writer, learning to be comfortable putting yourself out there.

Writing consistently has a compounding effect. It has no immediate impact, but it eventually builds up to create major change.

Compound writing increases your momentum as well: if you set out to publish 200 words every day, you usually end up with more.

Few people are capable of this feat, which is why it quickly becomes an unfair advantage. If you write well, you have the power to create lasting change. If you don’t, writing regularly won’t prevent you from writing crap, but it will feel good in a couple of months, which is what matters most―to have fun while making yourself a favor.

When I want to complain about forcing myself to publish at least 200 words every day, I just look up the routine of the most prolific writers.

Stephen King, 2000 words. Jack London, 1500 words. Mark Twain, 1400 words. Michael Crichton, 10000 words. Balzac used to write for 16 hours a day and went on to publish 85 novels in 20 years.

Then I laugh at how ridiculous I sound when I complain about my daily streak that won’t even take an hour to complete if I just get it done. Consistency and intentional growth are the only two things that matter to get better at writing.

I have consistency, but what about growth? I might lack talent, but I can make up for it with prolificness. The question becomes: how can I write more at a higher speed without sacrificing quality? The answer might be ”Progressive Overload”, a famous concept in weightlifting.

If to some extent the brain works like a muscle, then it’s probably possible to increase its performance over time.

If I set out to add 10 words to my daily word count every day, the compound result should result in a huge increase in my total word count. Starting from 200 words, it would take two weeks to reach a daily target of 350 words. 500 words after a month. 1000 after two months.

The idea would be to add “weight” until muscular failure, meaning, the incapacity to output more words in the same time window. Then I would be back to 200 words per day and repeat the cycle till I grow more comfortable.

Or I could just test my limits straight away and do one week at maximum effort, writing from the second I wake up till the moment I fall asleep. It would be a good way to finally make some progress on my writing projects.