“Write 10,000 Words Everyday” is Terrible Advice

While hard work and volume are important in order to improve at your craft, smart work and the revision of your work are significantly more valuable.

Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson’s research on the acquisition of expert-level performance has produced some lasting impacts for individuals in all walks of life hoping to break through in their chosen field or career. New Yorker journalist Malcolm Gladwell popularized Ericsson’s research in his fabulous 2008 book Outliers, which helped catapult to fame one of Ericsson’s core learnings: the “10,000 hours” rule.

The rule is as simple as it sounds: put in at least 10,000 hours towards your craft and you will achieve mastery in that pursuit. While readers of Gladwell’s Outliers finished the book with the ample motivation needed to commence on their own “10,000 hours” journeys into learning a new skill, what most missed out on was the second — perhaps, the more important — aspect that conjoined Ericsson’s “10,000 hours” rule: deliberate practice.

If the “10,000 hours” rule underscores the bare minimum necessary to achieve mastery of a rigorous skill, then deliberate practice is the guiding light through which that skill can be built. Where 10,000 hours is the “hard” work, deliberate practice is the “hard to do” smart work.

This particular distinction is of significance because I recently came across a #SWLH article by Michael Shreeve that went viral, “How To Write 10,000 Words Per Day.” Upon reading that popular article, I became increasingly worried that readers of the piece were being heavily misinformed about what it actually means to:

1. Write 10,000 words every day and, more importantly
2. Why writing 10,000 words will not do much for their writing careers if they use the advice that Mr. Shreeve erroneously provides in his piece.

The beginning first few sentences of Michael Shreeve’s article for the #SWLH publication on Medium.

As you can see above, Mr. Shreeve begins the piece by a tongue-in-cheek quote about how hard work leads to luck, which (presumably) leads to success. Then, he ventures to a “true confession” about his self-admitted claim that he’s a “terrible writer.” Being a self-proclaimed “terrible writer,” he goes on to brag about generating “$1,000,000 in revenue last year as a solo-preneur” based on his writing (that — keep in mind — was produced by a “terrible writer”). These revelations are immediately followed by two quick links to his own blog elsewhere.

Having provided his claim-to-fame remarks, Shreeve proceeds to offer an example of another famous seven figure writer named Andy Weir. Mr. Weir has been renowned in the sci-fi genre in recent years for his 2011 New York Times bestselling novel “The Martian.” Weir, a computer programmer by trade, was relatively unknown to the grander world until “The Martian” released and garnered well-deserved universal praise. The book was born out of Weir’ fanatical love for watching “every” documentary known to man about NASA and the space programs. As a hobby, Weir also dedicates large swathes of time towards cultivating his deep passion for physics and astronomical phenomena, which meant he willingly spent thousands upon thousands of hours laboring over the science behind “The Martian,” which is one of the most revered aspects of the book. This, of course, parallels the arduous years Weir spent honing his writing abilities.

In essence, Andy Weir, before he even thought about publishing “The Martian,” had to shore up on many incredibly dense topics in fields like chemistry, astronomy, physics, electronics, and space history in addition to improving at crafting an intriguing plot, creating relatable characters, and an engaging writing style before “The Martian” became a best-selling reality. This is not just hard work, it is “hard to do” smart work. And it was absolutely necessary in order for “The Martian” to be an enormous hit pre-, during-, and post- release. Not an easy feat.

And this brings us back to Michael Shreeve’s assertion about how one can improve as a writer by cranking out 10,000 words each and every day. Really?!?

Another tidbit from Mr. Shreeve’s piece that baffles me:

Not all of us can be best-selling authors like Andy Weir or J.K. Rowling. However, if we want that success, doesn’t it make sense to study what they’ve done?

And, what would be worth writing about each and every day that needed 10,000 words to express? Are you on a publishing deadline? If so, then even Andy Weir would’ve needed to step up his writing output. But, under normal circumstances, even those of us who wish to write a book or two don’t have any outside pressures to write 10,000 words every single day.

So, hypothetically, if we are trying to become the next Andy Weir, why would we spend an inordinate amount of our time and energy writing 10,000 words each day when writing is only one of a litany of many valuable skills and knowledge we’ll ultimately need to produce an impactful and lasting work?

Acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses his writing process. One of the core tenets of his philosophy when it comes to writing is the revision process.

If we take Mr. Shreeve literally and assume that he is urging the aspiring writer to actively write 10,000 words everyday, then how would that time be spent? Let’s turn to Shreeve for some insight:

So, if my math is correct, out of the 168 hours all of us have every week, Mr. Shreeve is purportedly spending “65+ logged hours of writing” in any given week. That leaves him with only 103 hours to apportion to other activities like travel, sleeping, relaxing, reading, “family time, dinner,” and other activities (Shreeve mentions running). The mental and physical strain and exertion that arises due to your writing 10,000 words everyday would also mean you would have to reach into additional reserves in order to do the other activities — research, proofreading, reading books on topics outside of your field, among others — that are just as integral to your improvement as a writer.

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Sure, if one practices the “write 10,000 words each day” routine, then one would be somewhat accomplished as a writer after a number of years. But, writing involves more. It asks more of its creator. Great writing doesn’t come from just developing your writing skills. It demands that the author be a relative expert in their topical area, whether this is sports, science, technology, or healthcare. That expertise then adds to the writing and enriches it for would-be readers of the work. Doggedly writing 10,000 words every single day prevents you from engaging in those other highly relevant activities needed to kindle and super-charge a budding writer’s growth.

This is what sets the Andy Weirs, the Malcolm Gladwells, and the J.K. Rowlings apart from the average writers of the literary world. The answer lies where it always has: Weir and Rowling have painstakingly engaged in deliberate practice and accrued their 10,000 hours (if not many more) that way, while Shreeve has simply amassed his hours by doing some good ole fashioned “hard work.” And, as you know by now, hard work like “write 10,000 words” is not the same as the hard work that goes into deliberate practice.

I realize that the idea of not writing every day flies in the face of every bit of writing advice that new writers get. And, you know, “Write every day” isn’t bad advice when you’re new and still working on honing [your] craft. It can help you make the time you need to actively practice your skills, which is important when you’re still figuring out how to write a good sentence. But one of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was from Carol Emshwiller, who said, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes permanent.”

If you are sitting down writing the same old shit every day, without actively working to level up your craft, you’re not going to get any better. You will just keep writing the same shit and throwing it against the wall and hoping it sticks. This is one of the reasons I’m always writing a book I’m not quite ready to write.

— Kameron Hurley, “Life on 10,000 Words a Day: How I’m Hacking My Writing Process” [bold emphasis mine]

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It’s not a crime to work hard and put in your due diligence. I agree completely with the little areas in Shreeve’s piece when he’s imploring the reader to put in the hours. People don’t just stumble upon mega-success the way Weir did with “The Martian” without having worked an incredibly long time to even make that possible.

However, it makes no sense to simply and mindlessly just write “10,000 words everyday” when that effort can be divided into learning more about the field you’re tackling, or into voraciously reading books across disparate subject areas, and/or into actually proofreading the 10,000 words you’ve written. A better suggestion would be to write 10,000 words one day and then spend the next few days re-reading that piece again and proofreading as you go along. That is what deliberate practice looks like in action. It’s the constant act of consciously thinking about each and every word you’ve written/typed during and after (sometimes long after) you’ve done so.

Game of Thrones showrunner, David Benioff, discusses the in-depth and engrossing nature of his writing process. As evident by Benioff’s remarks, writing 10,000 words each day would be great practice, but it doesn’t scratch the surface of all the other things a writer has to consider in order to have their work “come alive.”

This is a common trend in most of the great writers. They’ll write in focused bursts of roughly 2,000 or 4,000 words. Then, they’ll spend time going through the written material, recursively fixing every mistake and supplementing the bleaker parts. These proofreading sessions are then interspersed with more writing and changes. As Ta-Nehisi Coates notes, the writing process is an exercise in repeated failures and, if you’re doing it correctly, each setback leads you one step closer to a respectable body of work.

The other demoralizing aspect of “write 10,000 words everyday” is that the more you do this type of hard, non-deliberate work over a number of years, you will reap the benefits of your hard work; however, there will come a time, when simply showing up and writing 10,000 words will not make you a better writer (as Kameron Hurley poignantly writes in his quote above). This is showcased by a simple, but brilliant concept in economics called the “law of diminishing marginal returns.” The law states that as you increase your activity or input in a task, you will experience significant gains, however, over a protracted period of time, the same input will begin to garner lesser and lesser gains until such a time arrives when continuing the same efforts will begin producing flatlining — or even negative — gains.

“In the classic example of the law, a farmer who owns a given acreage of land will find that a certain number of labourers will yield the maximum output per worker. If he should hire more workers, the combination of land and labour would be less efficient because the proportional increase in the overall output would be less than the expansion of the labour force. The output per worker would therefore fall. This rule holds in any process of production unless the technique of production also changes.”

— Encyclopedia Britannica

Therefore, advice like Shreeve’s “write 10,000 words everyday” would be perfect for beginners or newcomers to writing; however, after a few years, that activity alone would not help an aspiring writer transition from an average writer to an experienced, once-in-a-lifetime writer. What does bridge that gap, then? Deliberate practice.

You have to constantly critique and deconstruct and rectify your own work. That’s the only way forward. Whether this means you have to write 50 words or 5 paragraphs before you have to pause to critique your progress, then so be it. If this entails you writing 1,000 words and then rigorously proofreading what you’ve written over the next few days, then that’s also fine. But until you actively begin undergoing deliberate practice as a writer, you will not improve to the stratospheric levels of great writing. And, if you don’t improve significantly, you don’t stand a chance of being the next Andy Weir or George R.R. Martin.

Advice like “write 10,000 words” is an optical illusion. Don’t fall for it, folks. Question it. Break it down. Analyze it. And, if it still stands after all those repeated jabs of introspection, then it’s worth something. If it doesn’t — and after this article, “write 10,000 words everyday” shouldn’t — then throw it out and look for a new way.

Deliberate practice is that new way.

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Update #1; Saturday, Sept. 5th, 2015: Michael Shreeve and I have reached out to one another and are sharing our thoughts on which of our ideas work best and where we are diverging, we encourage every reader to also engage in the conversation as well since Michael and I alone can’t possibly figure out what works best. We are both just trying to make sense of how we can go about creating work that matters and is insightful.

But, for now, Michael has written an excellent response to my article that I think all of you should read:

First off, this is a well written article. I loved it.

Update #2; Saturday, Sept. 5th, 2015: I took to Twitter today and asked some of my favorite writers for their input on this topic. So far, MLB/Grantland sportswriter Jonah Keri and ESPN’s sportswriter and radio personality Bomani Jones have responded back with their comments:

I will post more snippets as more writers reach out to me. Especially those that tend to fall on Michael Shreeve’s side of the argument.

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