How I Write 10,000 Words Per Day, Every Day

Most people don’t believe me when I say that I write 10,000 words per day, every day.

Between writing on Quora and Minutes, overseeing writing quality for our clients at Digital Press (not counting the dozens of emails I respond to), my own personal book and personal branding projects, my monthly newsletter, and a wide range of other writing-related endeavors, I can honestly say that even 10,000 words per day is (at times) a low estimate.

I am a professional writer.

So, if you want to know what a day in the life of a very busy professional writer looks like, here you go (and what you can do to crank out the same amount of writing).

The Morning: 3,500 Words

Every single morning, I wake up and try to knock out three pieces before I do anything else.

What I’ve learned over the years is that there are really only two windows of time that allow me to write at my absolute best.

7:00 a.m.—11:00 a.m.

7:00 p.m.—11:00 p.m.

Sure, I do plenty between those two gaps, but for some reason the words come so much more naturally right when I wake up, or later in the day when the sun begins to set.

So, I do my best to take full advantage.

The moment I wake up, I brush my teeth, take a shower, make a quick breakfast, text my girlfriend good morning (those love letters don’t count as part of the 10,000), and then I turn off my phone.

Yes, I turn it off.

The more times I am pulled out of the flow, the longer it takes for me to write a piece.

I have been writing online for a very long time. The first blog post I ever wrote was in 2007, when I was 17 years old. I wrote about how I was one of the highest ranked World of Warcraft players in North America. As soon as I realized people all over the world were reading my writing, that I had a voice, I was hooked.

Today, assuming there are no distractions (and the density of the piece), I can pretty much stream-of-consciousness a nearly perfect ~800 article in 30 minutes. If it’s a subject I am familiar…