It Takes Me More Than 3 Hours to Write One Story
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It Takes Me More Than 3 Hours to Write One Story

Photo by Krzysztof Niewolny on Unsplash

I recently read something that said if you take more than one hour to write an article, you are probably going to become “a bad writer.”

Lol. Surely, they must be joking, I thought. And in a way… they were. It was a pretty damn clickbaity title and subtitle when the main point seemed to be that you shouldn’t overthink things or be too much of a perfectionist. Okay, fine. I’m on board with the idea that perfectionism kills creativity, but don’t you know that arbitrary time limits will stunt your creative growth too?

In one way or another, I’ve been blogging for a really long time. More than half my life. For many years, it was just another hobby of mine, and then for about four years, I wrote for other people. For the past two years, I’ve been living solely off my earnings from writing online— but I no longer blog for any other business or organization. I write what I want to write about when I want to write it.

Even so, in all my years of writing, do you know what’s never happened to me? I have never become a faster writer. Never. Sure, I do have the occasional rant that I might write in 60 to 90 minutes, but those are actually rare and typically about politics. For the most part, I spend more than three hours on each and every story I write.

And my 15 minute reads? Well, most of those take me more like eight hours to complete.

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What I don’t love, though, is this pressure within the online writing community to conform to certain “standards” of supposedly successful writers. Sometimes, that pressure breeds ridiculous or pretentious ideas, like the notion that you’ll somehow do better or make more money if you spend less of your time actually writing.

Somewhere along the way, many online writers came to this strange consensus that an hour is the ideal maximum amount of time to spend on one story. In some ways, I get it. Content mills frequently pay peanuts. If you’re earning $10 or less on a single story, then you really don’t want to be taking up more than an hour of your time.

But the content mills are wrong. There’s a huge problem in the modern world where people want to get their content for free. This means the workers crafting that content are routinely shafted. In response, far too many writers have decided it’s worth playing that game by insisting the rat race isn’t so bad if you just write really, really fast.

Oh, cool. While we’re at it, let’s say hello to mediocrity and creative burnout. Hi, guys!

Something I’ve heard time and time again in the writing community is this “magic hour” idea. People really seem to believe that there’s something special about writing a story in less than 60 minutes. Many of them will tell you that all of their popular stories took them less than an hour to put together. Or, they’ll insist that the stories they spend more time on go absolutely nowhere.

Some writers have aggrandized the hour-long article to the point where they insist you can’t really be successful unless you follow their time limit too. I’m sorry — well, not sorry — but it’s really just bullshit and I’m begging you not to take the bait.

Virtually every online writer wants to make decent money or “go viral” to a certain extent, so, we often like this whole notion that there are shortcuts.

But?

If there’s one damn unicorn in the writing room that virtually everybody wants to exist and never will, it’s the shortcut to success.

To be fair, I happen to know many one-hour article writers, and I want to be clear that they’re all great people and good writers. Some of them have huge and loyal followings. Most of them, however, do not consistently get the results they want. Not at all. This means the money or engagement they get from their writing varies widely. I’d classify their results as “tempestuous.”

As a result? I see a lot of these one-hour writers give into complaints about platforms and algorithms. How it’s really not “fair” that their best story got overlooked. Again. Or, they look at somebody else’s work that’s performing well and lament that they don’t know why their stuff isn’t getting too many views. And then, they do one of two things.

They either quit writing or, they keep writing the same damn thing with those same damn 60 minutes

I can’t help but facepalm and think, bless their hearts. I mean, really. If you’re only willing to invest an hour of your time in writing a story from beginning to end, it’s more than a little absurd to expect your work to go very far. You probably need to be a little bit famous before you can consistently live off those quickly written stories.

Of course, it’s not wrong to spend an hour or less on one story… if that’s really how little time it takes. But it’s entirely unrealistic to think that capping off each article at an hour is going to make you an inherently better writer. There are way too many variables involved with good writing to pin so much upon something as arbitrary as 60 fleeting minutes.

Next week marks the anniversary of that time I quit my job with a content mill to finally, only write for myself. I’d been blogging for money for just about eight months when I made the leap and it was pretty scary. In hindsight, it was also the right move, but I’ll be honest. I never really knew if it was going to work out. Even today, I still don’t “know” what my life will look like in five years. I don’t know what changes will happen that will be completely out of my control.

That’s okay.

To a certain degree, I really just have to commit myself to “making it work.” A large part of that commitment is my understanding of the type of writer I am. As time has progressed, I’ve gotten much better at knowing my own voice and the type of stories readers like to see from me.

That doesn’t mean I never doubt myself or have bad days because I absolutely do. And sometimes, it bothers me a lot that I’m not a “fast” writer. After all, if I could write 10 good stories even four days a week, wouldn’t my income increase exponentially too?

It’s so easy — too damn easy — to place robotic demands upon creative work. But it’s also exhausting and incredibly overwhelming for people like me.

And sure, there are a few people out there who really do seem to write quickly and excel at it. Ayodeji Awosika and Tim Denning certainly come to mind and they’re some of the most successful people around within the online writing community. Yet, has it ever occurred to you that much of that success comes from playing to their strengths? Or, are you really just hoping that “fast” is the big secret to their success?

Unlike many “magic hour” writers, I can guarantee you that Tim and Ayo each put in the hours and the effort to get stellar results. And if things aren’t going their way? They’re not afraid to branch out or mix things up.

Truly successful creatives don’t bind themselves to dogma. And they don’t demand that the world reward them handsomely for putting in the bare minimum of effort.

So, no. You probably can’t be a Tim Denning or Ayo Awosika. You might not even be able to be a Shannon Ashley. But who can you be? And how many hours are you willing to give just to find that out? See, I long ago decided to let the Tim’s and Ayo’s of the world do their thing and focus on doing my thing. Because doing my thing is the only thing I can control.

The same thing goes for you and your work. You can’t really be doing your thing if you’re busy looking for shortcuts and ways to be a writer without, you know, writing.

But I get it. Everybody has that thing inside of them that says they’ll be better if they can get more done. If they can be faster. Has it ever occurred to you, though, that maybe that’s not your path?

Maybe your process takes a little longer than you’d like. Hell, maybe it takes days. Weeks, even.

The reality is that there probably are certain types of stories that you could write more quickly than others. That doesn’t mean those are the stories that will put you on the map, however. It also doesn’t mean that those are the stories you’ll actually want to write.

If I had to give an explanation as to why so many writers insist that the stories where they didn’t really try wound up being the most popular, I’d say it’s got nothing to do with the number of minutes it took them to write. Instead, I’d say the real answers are flow and letting go of expectations.

You might as well learn now that online writing isn’t some sort of rest-on-your-laurels career. Most folks aren’t going to cough up a diamond every hour. And your growth as a writer doesn’t always mean getting quicker. Frankly, 2020 has been my most financially rewarding year in terms of writing, but I’ve also taken much more time to sit on most stories. And I’ve wound up publishing less. Personally, I feel that my writing has improved and is always growing with me.

Yet, I’ve accepted that there are some things I will never be, and a fast writer is at the top of the list. When people espouse the so-called benefits of writing your articles in only an hour, I know they mean well. They typically believe it and truly aren’t trying to steer you wrong. But I’m afraid it really does steer other writers wrong. Aside from literal deadlines, the last thing any writer should be fixated on is how many minutes one story takes them.

I’d say, focus first on just getting the words out there, whether it takes you one hour or five. Get one story out there, and work on another. Try to recognize that one great measure of success is getting to spend more time doing something that you love, not less.

Ultimately, what you’re looking for when it comes to crafting killer articles isn’t expediency — it’s flow.

“The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” — Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

So, go ahead and write the damn article. Write another one. Don’t get too hung up on the numbers, but take note when you write something that really resonates with readers. Let go of the idea that every truly great story deserves to make bank.

Follow your path and see where it goes. Find your flow, and quit fretting over such arbitrary stipulations like the time it took you to write one piece. It doesn’t really matter if you happen to be slow like a tortoise or sluggish like a snail.

What matters is that you keep going and write to make an impact with those words.