How to be a prolific writer – Secrets to writing 1000 words (or more) a day

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Seth Godin is prolific. He has 18 published books. His blog is considered the #1 marketing blog out there and Seth is deservedly termed the ‘Marketing Guru extraordinaire . But, as much amazing as those factoids already are, here’s the clincher: Seth has written/updated/published on his blog everyday for the last 10 years. Yes, every friggin’ day. And, 100% of what he writes is super quality stuff. He takes the word prolific to new heights.

Now, I am no Seth Godin. Hell, I’m not even close to Arun Prabhudesai, the founder of trak.in, the technology and business blog, which I write for. A week back, I was going through one of Arun’s articles, and I saw a neat little number in a corner. Humans are very bad at perceiving the enormity of numbers. Not me. I translate huge data into real-world scenarios for better understanding and perception. So, I applied the same. Here’s a screenshot:

Look at that highlighted number: Yes, 2183 

2183 articles till date. Now, Arun started the blog (or at least, the first post from the archives is dated April 26, 2007). That gives us 6 years and 10 days till date. That’s 2200 days (give or take). So, Arun has written an article a day on an average. Prolific, indeed.

At the last count, I have written 53,567 words (many of them draft posts, which I’ll be publishing in days to come) in the last 51 days. That gives me the authority to pen down this article. Also, because a few of you keep asking me how I do it.

To be a ‘prolific’ writer, you need to be an avid reader

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Read stuff. Lots of it. And, a diverse range of stuff. I am a consumption freak. On any average day, I’m reading at least 50k-60k words. Don’t worry. I am not doing just that the whole day. I read fast, like, really fast. (May be, for some other day, “How to read fast without losing the plot”.) That translates to about 2 hours of reading per day. I read books (fiction and non-fiction) and I read blogs, lots of them. At any time I have a subscription to around 40 blogs on my feedly, that I read almost daily. These are business blogs and entrepreneurship blogs, health 2.0 blogs, blogs about blogging, writing, social media, psychology, finance, economics and many personal blogs too. Diversity of topics is really important.

While honestly, I’d like to bring down the consumption drastically and increase the creation significantly, it still is good advice to be spending a 2-hour slot only reading stuff.

PS: I don’t go to any news sites, neither do I subscribe to a newspaper. News is, almost always, hyped and manipulated, repetitive stories of violence or greed, or a combination of both; not a very good way to start my day. I believe its completely unnecessary in this era of social media. If its anything worth knowing, the news will definitely come to me via Facebook, Twitter or something else.

Always be writing

Literally. Whenever you’re reading something or even while on the road, always be writing. I’d immediately jot down whatever insights, quotes, facts and figures or learnings I’d get while reading something. Even while I’m not in front of my laptop, I’m always taking mental notes. The trick is to write it down as soon as you get near a laptop or a PC.

Distraction free and cloud-based writing tools

Extending from the previous point, you need to use a few web-based tools to do your writing. I’m a BIG fan of Evernote for taking down notes, or jotting down a point or two to remember to elaborate on later and just about for everything small and big, that people generally tend to forget. Now, Evernote is a cloud-based service. So, I can update any mental notes that I’d have taken even if I’m sitting in front of someone else’s PC or Laptop (obviously, with an internet connection) and it’d be instantly updated. Same goes for when I want to refer to something, but don’t have my laptop around.

I do all my writing on a Google Chrome extension called WriteSpace. If you are anything like me, someone who gets easily distracted, this is the writing space for you. Want to worry about writing only and take care of the fonts and alignments etc. for later?

Write Space, is a customizable full-screen text editor, once installed, you can simply open as a new tab in your browser. Do your writing. Forget worrying about saving your document because Write Space has a persistent auto-save feature that saves your stuff with every key stroke.

You can use it offline. Your content is stored locally. And, you’ll get live document statistics viz. the number of words, lines, and characters. This is certainly my favorite app and a must-have for all who write.

You can Install Write Space. Also, you can read my article on “7 Must-Have Google Chrome Apps For Information Junkies & Content Writers.”

Start small and increase gradually

Don’t expect that on the first day itself, you’ll come up with the 1000 best words in the history of literature. You’ve got to start slow. Do some free writing, which is writing whatever comes to your mind. Most of it might be utter crap or gibberish, but just write. Writing like most skills is a volumes game. First comes quantity, then quality. So, start with a 100 words and then increase by a 50-150 each day.

But once you’ve started, don’t skip

Now, you can write may be a good enough 1000 words. Don’t skip the habit; at least not for two days in a row. I’ve seen it happen to me quite often, with writing, as with many other habits, that if I skip something for a day I can get back on track. But, if somehow, I skip it for two consecutive days, its really difficult.

Overhyped: “Choose one time of the day”

At least it doesn’t work in my case. Sometimes I write in the early mornings, sometimes late night, sometimes around 10-12 am (like this one) and sometimes in the afternoons. Inspiration doesn’t follow a fixed time-table; so why should you? Write whenever you feel like. Also, because I am in the habit of taking notes and writing unfinished drafts, it helps because then I have this sudden urge on one fine day to complete one of the articles. That could be after I get that one hidden item or go into a zone triggered by one little spark of ingenuity.

Decide the final title of the write up even before you start writing

This is probably something that is responsible for 60% of my success with being able to write a 1000 words a day. I decide on the article/blog post title way beforehand, sometimes even before I’ve the slightest clue of what the body of the write up is going to be composed of.

Tip: Try to organize your life, mainly building habits around this idea. So, may be think of something that you’d like to do. Then decide the article title. Now, work towards that, so as to be able to do things that will enable you to authoritatively write about the same. This has worked incredibly well for me.

Make a commitment, preferably Public

Making a public commitment, like the one that I made last week, ensures that you’re on track, because being shamed and humiliated in public is something all of us fear. I’d have procrastinated writing this blog post had it not been for the inherent responsibility that comes with making a public commitment.

Similarly, when I saw that I was not writing frequently enough for trak.in, I made a commitment to Arun. Now, I have basically guaranteed myself that the frequency is taken care of. Small hack- big significance.

I am no way near the best of the best, but I think with these strategies, I’m moving in the right direction. And so can any of you aspiring writers out there. This will easily convert in the days to come, into 2000, even 5000 words a day, which can help you (and me) take up interesting writing projects.

Notice how most of the pointers are specific insights and tactics and hacks that are actionable. That’s because I don’t believe in kumbaya advice like ‘Harness the flow’, ‘be calm’, ‘align your mind’ or ‘Set the mood’ that other bloggers BS you with. If its not practical and actionable, its bloody useless.

So, subscribe for more of such actionable posts.

PPS: For those of you who would want to hire me for their freelance projects, I’m ready to take up a few, limited number of  projects. You can contact me via the Contact page. I’ll get back to you ASAP and take the discussion forward.

This blog post first appeared on Abhash’s blog Ace the System. You can go have a look for similar posts and subscribe.