How I Wrote 10000 Words in a Single Day — The Method I Learned by Doing
In this article, I will tell you how I did it and what I learned from it.
The Method
Planning (3 effective hours)
First, we need a plan. In creative writing, the ones that make a plan to write are called map writers. Writing maps work for all kinds of writing, so let’s make our map.
Decide what you are writing. An essay, novel, short story, blog post, technical book? Depending on what you are writing, you will need a structure or another.
In my case, I was writing a stack of educational articles for work so that I could go on vacation without worries.
So I started by asking for a list of all the articles I had to write.
When I got this, I started a light research process about what people needed to know about the topic; this would help me write the outline. The way I outline is by writing the headlines of my article, you can delete them later to make your article more fluid.
When that was done, I researched every section, took notes, and copied the links of my sources. This whole process took two hours for 20 different articles; I have to say that I was writing about topics that I know, so research wasn’t so hard.
Write (4 effective hours)
With your map done, it’s time to start writing. Open the software that you use for writing and start typing. Don’t think about the grammar; you will clean everything later. Now you need a draft.
Note: there’s some time that I can’t type as much as I would like to because of the Carpal tunnel syndrome. So I started to use the speech-to-text tool of Google Docs. This was life-changing; I could write the same piece a lot faster. I got used in less than one hour, and I have always been the slowest, so you will do it a lot faster. Even if you are shy, get used to hearing your voice if you want to write more quickly.
Let the draft aside. Put a timer, so you don’t forget to get back to it.
Revising the Draft (6 effective hours)
The first time I wrote a big piece, it was an essay, and the first draft was such a mess (which is normal) that I was scared to get back to it.
I didn’t want to see it. I just wanted to forget about its existence. I procrastinated on the correction until I couldn’t procrastinate it anymore.
Then I opened word, and I looked at it, and yes, it was as bad as I remembered. So I googled how to fix that mess, and I did it. With time, many books and courses later, this process became more enjoyable than writing.
You have first to start reading your work from the start. Write down the inconsistencies you find in a note apart. Write all the ideas you get while reading it, but try not to begin correcting yet, or you may get lost.
Next, you have to trim. You need to delete all that doesn’t apport anything, this might be a repetition, or if you are writing a novel, it could even be a character.
Reorder. Every piece of content has an optimal order: by topic, importance, chronological, etc. Make it fluid and precise.
Reword. Clarify the ideas you want to share by rewording them. Be as specific as you can. Give examples as needed. Play with the language, make a richer text by using metaphors, alliterations, etc.
Give it some rhythm. Play with the length of the sentences. Put some short sentences between the long ones to give some dynamism to the paragraph.
Grammar and orthographic correction. You probably already cleaned the ones that you could see. It’s hard to avoid. But now you will do it purposely. In addition to the manual review, I recommend using a good grammar checker tool.
Of course, you won’t need to do all the steps for every text you write. The grammar and orthographic review and the trim process are the only obligatory ones.
I would add rewording the ideas to be as straightforward as possible, but if the text is readable, and you don’t have time, you can skip it.
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