How I Write +5,000 Words Almost Every Day
By: Sinem Günel
Tags: Creativity, Advice, Ideas, Writing, Writing Tips

How I Write +5,000 Words Almost Every Day

And how you too, can build a writing routine that fits your needs

Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash

While Social Media has tons of negative aspects, it also has some great ones. For example, you can come across tools and products you might not have found without seeing it on the profile of an influencer or a friend.

Last week, when I was browsing through some Instagram stories, the video of a fellow writer caught my attention. She was talking about a writing challenge and that she’s trying to write 2,500 words every day. What was really interesting, though, was how she tracked the number of words per day: She was using a word counter app on her Mac. I’m not sure if that’s a common tool most digital writers know about anyway, but I heard of it before, and I was thrilled.

During the past two years, I’ve written more than 300 blog posts and a book of 400 pages, so I wish I’d known about the tool earlier. I guess that’s one of the products you don’t think of before having, but once you have it, you don’t want to miss it.

Until I downloaded a word counter app, I had no idea what my average daily word count was. Yet, after a casual work week, I realized it’s around 5,000 words per day. This includes everything I write on my laptop: Articles, emails, copy for my business, Whatsapp messages, social media posts,…

And while I reach those 5,000 words per day effortlessly, I realized that this sounds like a lot to most people. We all know how it was back in school when we had to hand in papers and desperately tried to prolong our written pieces.

If you’re, however, writing because it’s your job, like in my case, it’s not about typing as much as possible, but rather about writing lots of useful and high-quality content.

The good news is that writing much doesn’t need to be hard or complicated. Instead, it can even be fun if you take care of a few basics and build a consistent writing routine that fits your needs.

Here’s what I did to build a consistent writing practice and how you too, can use these strategies:

Decide when and where you want to write

Even though writing means getting work done, it can be quite different from other tasks, such as client calls, brainstorming, or administrative to-do’s.

To write productively, you’ll need to be fully focused, that’s why most people prefer a specific time and place for their writing routines. Many writers whom I know prefer mornings and late evenings for their practice as they seem to be most creative and productive during these times of the day.

Besides the time of your writing routine, having a particular place dedicated to your writing might also make a difference. If you, for example, have a work desk to get all your other stuff done, focusing on your writing while sitting there might seem hard due to distractions. In that case, you might try writing from the kitchen table, from your balcony, from a café nearby or whatever environment best fits your needs.

What I do whenever I feel uninspired is sitting at our dining table, which is right across our bookshelf. By looking at hundreds of books, I remind myself that all these people managed to write entire books and that writing a blog post is not that hard. It might sound weird, but so far, this approach helped me to get my writing done during my most unproductive times.

Bottom line: Figure out when your most productive writing time is and where you feel most productive and inspired during your writing schedule.

These two aspects might sound like trivialities, but for me, they play a huge role. I’m a 10x faster writer late at night than during the afternoon. Thus, it makes sense to get administrative tasks done during the day and then write during the evening. Find what works best for you.