Hey everyone,
This Friday, I’m once again attempting to write 10,000 words in a day. This will be my third attempt in the last six weeks. The first time I crashed out at 6,892 and the second time I hit 7,463 before I lost steam.
It’s interesting that when I first started mentioning 10k Fridays in my Write With Me 2021 program, which I’m currently running, most of the writers thought it crazy. Now, three weeks in, several of them are gearing up to do 10k Friday with me. Most of them have written every single day for the duration of the program and collectively, we wrote 200,000 words in the first 20 days.
If you asked the writers in the program, almost all of them will tell you (as they post on our group) that this is the most they’ve written, it’s the most effortless writing they’ve ever done, and it’s the first time they’ve been so consistent. Many of them have brought back lost projects they’re now making progress on.
What changed?
The same thing I saw happen repeatedly in 30 Days, 30 Queries. Writers came in with trepidation. They wanted to learn how to write pitches that worked but most of them thought 30 pitches in 30 days was an exaggeration, that it was marketing, a catchy title. They were going to learn to write good pitches, and they’d go from sending one or two a month to three or four, from writing for free for local magazines to maybe—one day—getting paid for their work.
By day ten, many of them had received emails from editors at top publications and started building relationships. Some had assignments from dream publications.
Now, many of those same writers not only have full-time journalism careers, but send pitches without even thinking about it. Thirty pitches a month is easy, doable, something that is part of their toolkit when workflow ebbs.
It’s the same with 10k Fridays.
I’ve written 10,000 words in a day before, in previous years, but it always came at a cost. I’d crash the day after, wouldn’t write for weeks. I could do a 10k day, but if I couldn’t write for days after, what was the point?
So I stopped doing it.
I want to write 10,000 words in a day, but not at the expense of my family or my mental health. If it was ever going to be a part of my toolkit, it would have to be (1) sustainable, and (2) part of my everyday life.
The reason it works for other writers, as well as it’s working for me, is threefold:
- I showed them it could be done, not by showing them my word counts, but showing them how easy it was for them to increase their word counts.
- They saw that higher word counts didn’t mean lower quality of life or frustrating hours spent in the chair.
- They actually enjoy the process. And when we enjoy our writing, we want to do more of it.
Look, this isn’t about the program. It’s closed for registration and we won’t open again until December.
The reason I’m telling you this, and the reason I continue to write these emails, is because I really believe that when we share what’s working for us, especially something that isn’t considered “normal,” it inspires other people to be daring and consider what might be possible for them.
A four-minute mile was considered impossible until British athlete Roger Bannister achieved it in 1954, and then just two months later, two other athletes had done the same. Since then, 1,400 male athletes have hit that number. And in 1999, Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco further lowered the record by 17 seconds.
In 1999, when NaNoWriMo began with the idea of writing 50,000 words in a month, you won’t believe how many writers balked at the number and insisted that anything written at that speed would be crap.
My point is, it’s completely natural to balk at targets, whether in pitching or in writing novels, that are new to you. But don’t assume they’re unachievable. There are only three things that take a goal from unattainable to something you do with regularity:
- Information
- Support
- Belief
Work on all three and you’ll get there.
I’m trying for 10k again this Friday. I haven’t moved around my schedule at all, which means there’s remote learning all day and movie night with the boys in the evening, so this shall be very interesting.
I’ll be back with a full report.
Cheers,
Natasha