What it takes to write 392,716 words in a week
By: Prerna Malik
Tags: Writer, Writers On Writing, Skills Development, Freelancers, Writing

This is how I did it

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Let me start by saying… I love to write.

I’m known for 300-word Facebook posts (yeah, those!), 3000-word blog posts and 10,000-word sales pages.

Words are my besties and I lean on them. Often.

Which is why when Grammarly sent me this update, I air-pumped and danced a little chair dance of joy.

Screenshot of my Grammarly weekly update

And in all my oversharing excitement, slapped up a post on Facebook celebrating my win, my “new record”.

Which naturally led to a lot of questions.

The main one being…

How can you write 400K words in a week?

Short answer: Doing what Cal Newport calls “Deep work.”

Cal’s book by the same name was one of my top 3 books of 2019 and I took his advice to heart …

“…what we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore — plays in defining the quality of our life.” — Cal Newport

This is also WHY I write so much.

However, we all know it isn’t as simple as that.

Regardless of whether you want to write 400,000 words in a week or not (that definitely isn’t my normal!)…

…if you are a writer or like yours truly, a copywriter, then chances are you do want to get better and faster at writing.

So, what does it really take?

1. Writing/Typing… FAST

One of the skills that I picked up when working at my first job in an advertising agency was… typing.

And I’d often spend a lot of free time taking typing tests and trying to beat my score. Yes, I do have a competitive streak.

However, all that time spent upping my typing speed has paid off in bucketloads. 400,000-word bucketloads.

Today, I can write an 800-word article in 20 minutes.

When you have ideas pouring as fast as November rain, your hands need to keep up with that.

You don’t have to take typing tests or classes. You can practice writing fast when you do your regular projects.

You’ll notice when your speed increases and you don’t have to look at the keyboard either.

2. Know your best time for deep work and then… use it

Whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, it doesn’t matter. I know Cal Newport, James Clear, and everyone in the 4 AM club make a strong case for the morning hours and personally, I concur.

Having said that, I also know everyone’s different. So if you find yourself working in a focused and “flow” fashion in the wee hours of the night, go for it.

What matters isn’t when you do your deep work but that you do it.

If writing is your deep work, use your best hours to write.

3. Use distractions as a reward and as writing practice

Distractions are a natural and even, needed occurrence in our daily lives.

Whether it is scrolling through your Facebook feed, bingeing on IG stories or popcorn-ing your way through YouTube videos, we all have distractions clamoring for our attention.

And while you don’t want to spend your best time indulging them… you also don’t have to kill them all.

(Sidenote: This is where I differ from Cal ever so slightly!)

You can use distractions as rewards for deep work and as writing practice.

Those 300-word Facebook posts I told you about?

That’s me indulging my need for social media, rewarding myself for a sales page written well AND practicing my writing skills further.

Distractions are dangerous only when they get out of hand and threaten the sanctity of your schedule and the sanity of your mind.

Used smartly, distractions can be quite delightful.

4. Write when you can

Want to be a better writer?

A faster writer?

Write when you can.

Write notes to yourself in your online journal.

Write up a post like this one for Medium.

Write emails to friends and business contacts.

Write on Facebook or LinkedIn.

You’re in the business of writing words. Use them.

Write when you can, challenge yourself constantly (see #5 below), and you’ll find that not only do you get better at writing, you’ll also enjoy it. More.

5. Create artificial deadlines

There’s the concept that the work you want to do stretches to fill the time available to do it.

If you know you have a week to write an article, chances are you will take a week to do that.

However, if you know you only have 6 hours to write and submit it or you wouldn’t get published, you’ll find that magically the article comes together in 6 hours or even less.

Ask me how I know that?

THAT is why I’ve started setting artificial deadlines that are real to me.

How do I make these artificial deadlines real?

At the start of the month, I’ll plug them into my Google calendar.

Every week, when I move things from my calendar to my planner, those deadlines move into my planner.

I see them every day and the thing about seeing a date written out in your planner is that it tricks your brain into accepting it as the deadline.

A side benefit of this is that as a copywriter who writes for several clients at one time, I usually get work done ahead of time. How cool is that?!

Try it out today and see whether or not it makes you write faster with greater focus as well.

6. Get used to free writing and enjoy it

Last year in January, I set myself a challenge to email our list every day with value-packed content written in 30 minutes or less. Those emails were a mix of long and short, but overall they were a blast to write and got great feedback.

Email from a happy reader

It was an exercise (and an experiment!) in fast and free writing. Without the pressure of perfection.

Setting that artificial deadline (see above) ensured I’d sit down when I was ready to write and then, whip out that email in 30 minutes or less.

How can you make free writing fun for you?

7. Show up every day

Finally, you need to show up and write.

Even when it doesn’t seem like fun. Even when no one is paying you to do it. Even when you may not feel like it.

Write whatever you want to but write.

Yes, writing regularly and writing well is like a muscle, a habit, a daily ritual. It needs work. It needs practice.

I’ve been writing consistently for over 130 weeks. I say “over” because Grammarly has been tracking me for 130 weeks but even before I started using Grammarly, I have been writing.

Bonus tip: Sign up for something like Grammarly. I use the free Chrome extension. It keeps me motivated and also helps me write better by pointing out errors.

Whether you want to write a novel this year, just be more consistent with writing for your blog or write for more clients, I hope these tips help you become a faster, more prolific writer.