Surprising Personal Takeaways From Writing 2000 Words a Day

I’m just over a week into a March challenge to write 60,000 words. I was surprised how many things I’ve learnt about writing in such a short space of time.

I’m currently doing the Income School Project24 Content Warrior Challenge. The challenge, which they hold twice a year, is to write 60,000 words in one month. All in the name of getting a little badge in their discourse forum to say I completed it…

When I first found out about it, it seemed an insane amount of words to write in 30 days, especially when it’s a side hobby for me. But broken down to 2000 words a day, it seemed a bit more friendly. I mean, how hard can it be to write 2000 words a day…!? I thought it would be especially pertinent to share my experiences, since this very week, Better Humans mentioned there may be a writing challenge on the way; I’m always up for a challenge!

However I didn’t think this particular challenge would have such a profound effect on me and my writing as I thought it would, especially in the space of just 11 days. A big part of me believed I would give up after about 4–5 days. But we’re now on day 11 (at time of writing) of the challenge and I’m still going strong. It’s quite exciting actually. I thought by this stage I would be dragging my heels, but the words are still coming thick and fast!

If you are thinking on doing a challenge such as this, here are my thoughts on my experience so far including some suggestions of things to do in preparation. I want to report fully on the experience after the end of March, but at this stage I have experienced enough ‘enlightening’ things that I felt it was time I should share them.

Try climbing big mountains once in a while and make sure to enjoy the view

Sometimes we’re afraid to start challenges because the process appears too daunting. It’s certainly something that I’ve been put off by in the past.

“Creativity is risky business. It requires vulnerability and courage — with a high probability of mistakes and failures along the way. There is no guaranteed outcome with creativity and courage. Moreover, creativity can be unpredictable and take you places you didn’t initially expect to go.” Benjamin P. Hardy in Personality Isn’t Permanent

What’s worse than failing? Not trying in the first place. If you set out to enjoy the places you might go and experience, then it doesn’t matter if you fail, every step is part of a much richer experience.

If I give up half way through, who cares? Only me at the end of the day. So if I build in an enjoyable process, I will never lose. As I see the word count mount up through the days, I get a little burst of enthusiasm to keep me going through the harder ones. I have not regretted starting. Nor will I regret giving up.

Have confidence in yourself to follow through

Past me believed that future me would give up. Past me and future me are two different people. I shouldn’t have judged myself this early.

“We tend to let our past define us. We allow earlier events, along with our responses to them, to decide who we are. Our values and convictions are often entwined with what has happened before in our lives. Sever this connection. Condition your mind to view your past as nothing more than training for the future.” Annette Tower in Mental Toughness

Future me understands if I can’t do this challenge then writing cannot be a larger part of my life. If I want to write to pay the bills, I need to be able to force myself to write. Past me should have recognised this.

I’m both excited for, and dreading, the editing

Writing lots of words is one thing, editing is a whole other board game. Generally I tend to edit as I go, reading backwards and forwards, making sentence tweaks and changing words. Because I need to write faster than is normally comfortable, I have to consciously stop myself from over editing. But with 30 days of writing will come 30 days of editing. Yikes!

I wouldn’t say that my writing is any worse with limiting editing as I go, in fact the opposite; I’d say it is getting better. I also am surprised at how little I write words for the sake of writing words. I thought I would fill up endless Obsidian notes with useless verbose text, meandering pointlessly around a topic whilst not covering it in any great detail. But that has not been the case. Apart from maybe that sentence…

I’ve learnt my typical writing rate forming a baseline on which to improve

I thought that my writing rate (as in words per period of time) would vary hugely. But as a general rule, if I am mostly focused on writing, and strictly avoiding heading off on tangents, I can write 1000 coherent and well-ish structured words an hour. I am able to write at a higher rate, but if I was to keep it sustainable, 1000 words in 60 minutes is a realistic baseline. It will be interesting to see if this improves as I get closer to the end of the month.

Writing is only 1/5 of ‘The Process’

As I elude to in more detail below, writing specifically, is only one fifth of what I would have originally called ‘writing’. The first part is coming up with ideas. The second is outlining and researching those ideas and it’s only the third step which is the actual ‘writing’. The fourth is the editing and the fifth is all the stuff after the editing i.e. formatting and publishing. So if I spend 1 hour writing 1000 words, it’s likely that there are another 4 on top for all the other bits, especially if I want truly unique, well-research and exciting writing.

It’s a useful approach to recognise that there are different parts, because it breaks down big projects into much smaller and more manageable chunks. Which brings me onto the next point.

I’m no longer afraid of big writing projects

I have a PhD thesis to write. I mean it’s basically a book. Although I’m still unsure of how its all going to come together, I’m much less afraid of the enormity of the writing task that lies ahead. It doesn’t take away the fear of getting everything well written, nor that it is coherent, but producing words to fill the pages is no longer a fear! If I can write 2000 words before breakfast, I can write 100,000 words in 2 years.

I’ve written more than the daily average required

The challenge is 60,000 words in March. Whilst technically 31 days, since 1935.5 is a bit of an unfriendly number, it’s 2000 words a day (with a day off). I thought I would be scraping the barrel to get to that word count, but on all but two days, I’ve exceeded the daily word target by 10–25%. That’s cool. I don’t feel the need to suddenly stop at 2000. If I’m in the flow and have the time available, I just keep going. Yes, there was one day where I only reached 1500, but that’s to be expected!

Preparation is absolutely key

It turns out, it’s not the difficulty of writing the words that’s the problem for me, it’s having enough viable and researched ideas in the pipeline that I can start from the get go.

5.15am = GO!

No dawdling, researching or tweeting; if I don’t start writing as soon as my bum hits the seat at 5.15am in the morning, I will run out of the time I’ve given myself to do it.

I quickly realised that I came into this challenge totally unprepared. Despite specifically noting Sönke Ahrens’ quote, “the key to successful writing lies in the preparation” the information contained within it, apparently bypassed my brain.

I thought I was prepared; I had, and still have, loads of ideas lined up for blog posts, but a list of ideated blog titles is not ready for writing. Some I can pick up and write about fairly easily, but if I want juicy, interesting content I need to research the topics first. Whilst I love research — it’s literally what I do for a day job — good research is time-consuming. I just don’t have enough time in my day to do both personal research and personal writing.

Furthermore if I try to do research at the same time as writing, I end up going off on tangents, my writing becomes disjointed and unstructured plus my writing speed drops substantially. Next time, I need to prepare better, with outlines and research already done. I did consider this a little before I started. If I’m going to be honest, I kind of felt doing this was cheating. If I have taken good notes along with my research, the content will be half written anyway. I don’t think I can win here!

Motivation, accountability and willpower are essential

Motivation: I’m not going to say I leap out of bed every morning, but the challenge of getting my 2000 words completed before my daughter gets up is just too much excitement to stay in bed for. Motivation is not my current problem but it is definitely needed.

Accountability: As part of the Content Warrior Challenge, there is an up-to-date spreadsheet with a list of names of everyone who has signed up for the challenge. We can all see how everyone else is doing. I feel like once I have started on the journey of filling in my numbers, I want to make it to the other end. I also told my husband I wanted to do the challenge. There has been at least one morning where he has turfed me out of bed and a few evenings he has reminded me I hadn’t finished my words yet.

“Just as governments use laws to hold citizens accountable, you can create a habit contract to hold yourself accountable. A habit contract is a verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if you don’t follow through.” James Clear in Atomic Habits

Willpower: Whilst accountability is great, writing a certain amount of words everyday needs personal intrinsic willpower to succeed. Because I really want to enjoy writing and do more writing, I need to learn to be able to do it when I’m not wanting to. Sub-consciously I need to identify a greater need after this challenge and that is what helps keep my willpower up.

It’s giving purpose to a current habit

I’ve been getting up at 5am for a while now to write. I have a good habit going. The problem was I didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. I manage to publish a few posts a week generally, but not consistently. Whilst doing the challenge is certainly not helping me publish this month, I have given my morning habit a clear direction. The difference between ‘I will write 2000 words today’ instead of ‘I should get some writing done today’ is subtle, but has a massively different outcome. Since I have (and will have) so much written, next month I will be able to prioritise editing and publishing and even promoting. It gives me more confidence at setting such targets in future plus affords me the realisation that directional habits can be incredibly powerful.

Writing and publishing are two different things

I’ve struggled to publish any blog posts so far this month. All my spare time has been, and will be, taken up by writing. I’ve always viewed the process as ‘writing a blog’, but if it’s only ever me that reads what I’ve written, then it’s not useful to anyone else. Editing and getting the content out to an external audience is a real challenge when the actual writing takes up 90% of the time I have. I’m trying not to be too hard on myself, but there’s a big itch of knowing I haven’t published anything since early last week.

Good writing can be learned and the best writing likely has some element of ‘being forced’ to get it done

I always thought that being a good writer was something that you have or you don’t. Whilst I absolutely do not class myself as a good writer I am making a lot of effort to improve. I will never be the fastest writer, nor the best writer, but I want to be a good writer so people can enjoy what I have to say. And I’ve realised that I can learn how to write better and that comes with practise. I can experience writing different things, in different ways and build a wealth of tricks and techniques to improve the structure and flow. I thought writing was writing but how wrong am I!

Reading is just as important as writing

I’ve not had the chance to read as much in the last 11 days. Reading is as essential to the writing process as listening is to the talking process. Books give you ideas and inspiration. You learn good writing and bad writing. They support your own arguments and highlight new ones. I’ve felt a bit lost not having as much chance to read.

Experiencing quantity over quality, at least for a while really helps up your game and see writing from a new perspective

This is the first time I have experienced writing for quantity over writing for quality. I thought using the quantity approach would force the writing of useless words — words for the sake of words — but actually there is less useless writing than I thought! By writing for quantity, I have felt less hindered by linear structure. I tend to dive in and out different parts of the text in whatever fashion I fancy.

If I have thoughts about something not related to the paragraph I’m currently in I’ll just start a new one and continue from there. I have no problem with leaving sentences half finished. If I’ struggling with an aspect, I’ll just leave it and often try coming at it from another angle instead.

By forcing quantity, I’ve pushed myself out of my comfort zone and that is always a good thing to do to improve any aspect of life!

I’ve learnt to focus on one part of ‘The Process’

As I eluded to above, writing is only one part of a 5 part process. Up until this last week, I have always combined writing and research. I couldn’t do one without the other. But now, due to time constraints, I have been forced to separate the two. This is a new experience for me. I’ve learnt the problem with doing research at the same time as writing is two fold.

The first is that when doing research alongside writing, I inevitably end up going off on tangents. There are interesting parallel ideas or new ideas that come up as I’m reading all sorts of different information resulting in my original writing idea going off in a million different directions and ending up being a half finished piece with at least three different ideas, which should be separate and not awkwardly coerced into one long sentence or paragraph…

The second problem, is the one we are all too familiar with, and that is multi-tasking and efficiency. It feels like we are doing more by combining research and writing. But it slows down the research process, because I’m trying to fit the research to an idea, rather than letting the research tell me the directions I need to go. It also slows down the writing process because I don’t know the story the research is telling, because I’m creating it as I go. Or worse, trying to fit it to a pre-conceived idea. For a structured argument, I’m finding it’s best to understand all the major ideas before writing.

I’m learning that writing is actually about structuring our understanding of a topic and if I don’t have the structure of the understanding then I am not yet ready to write. I do need a lot more practise at separating the two because it’s going against how I have worked so far, especially when it comes to scientific writing. However I’m excited to develop it further for this purpose and is something I will further reflect on after the full month is up.

Writing every day is really tiring

It’s hard work writing every day, especially if you miss your ‘golden hours’. I missed mine this morning and it’s been tough getting going. Luckily it’s my day off so I have a little leeway in when I write them, but getting down to writing has been more of a chore than normal.

“Anyway, let me simply say that the place where your greatest discomfort lies, is also the spot where your largest opportunity lives.” Robin Sharma in The 5AM Club

Have a reward at the end but also recognise part of the reward is what you have created and the experiences gathered along the way

I’m going to buy or do something nice at the end of this month if I complete the challenge. Probably a book! On writing! I will also get a Content Warrior badge in the Project24 online community. But the greatest reward of all will be that I completed it. Only 23 more days to go!