Writing a lot of words

900 hours later...

You’ve probably heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s famous notion that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in a particular skill. I was pondering the numbers recently, wondering where I am on that scale in terms of my writing.

I’ve been writing on a mostly weekly basis for about seven years. So that’s 364 weeks/chapters. Let’s drop that to 300 weeks/chapters to account for quiet periods in-between books. Each chapter is different, but let’s say it takes an average over three hors to write a chapter. This doesn’t take into account surrounding work on the book, such as working on the plot, themes, characters, world building and so-on - I’m just focusing on the pure writing of the words.

So 300 weeks of writing, at an average of hours per week gives me 900 hours of focused writing. That’s simultaneously a lot and a long way from 10,000. I could theoretically bump it up a lot if I started counting all the other writing I do, either professionally or when writing the non-fiction aspects of this newsletter - but that feels a little like cheating.

900 hours. According to Gladwell, I’m a long way from being an expert.

What this emphasises for me is how much work is required to get good. When I thought about writing this issue of the newsletter, it was to focus on how writing consistently and frequently helps to make you a better writer - that was before I was humbled by doing those ‘Gladwell calculations’. It’s still the case that writing a significant volume of work has helped me - I’m more confident and have more tools in my creative toolbox in 2022 than I did in 2015 when I began writing and publishing seriously.

I suspect there’s a tendency with a lot of beginner writers to keep putting off the commitment. You want to wait until you’re better. The muse isn’t with you right now. You’ve got writer’s block. You’re too busy at work. You don’t have enough time. The problem is that waiting until everything is right prevents you from racking up those hours.

It’s not purely about quantity, of course. The end goal here isn’t to get a big number of words to brag about, but to get better. In my experience the two things have gone together. That feeling when you look back at old work and cringe? That’s all part of this: it ‘s a good thing, because it means you’ve progressed to the point of recognising flaws in your earlier material.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

How to write a lot

I used to dabble in being a writer. I’d have bursts of creativity for a few weeks, blast out 10k and then exhaust myself. Projects would fester in draws and on hard drives, as I became distracted by something new and shiny.

That changed in 2015 when I switched to serial publishing. It was only intended to be a short term experiment, but seven years later I’m still at it. My approach is to write and publish as I go, sometimes with a buffer and sometimes without. It’s seat-of-your-pants stuff but it’s kept me coming back consistently, every week, for a very long time. The knowledge that there were readers already, waiting for new chapters, is a remarkably effective motivator. The work-in-progress book ceases being a mountainous project with months or years still to go and turns into a weekly micro-challenge.

I’ve got a whole guide on writing in this slightly-mad-but-satisfying way, which you can jump into here:

How to write serialised fiction

I’m working on the results and report from the Online Fiction Writers Survey, so keep an eye out for that later this month. Lots for everyone to learn in there!

Thanks for reading. Keep writing!