This is What Happened When I Wrote 5000 Words in One Week
Everyone on Medium loves to either read or write. That’s why we’re here.
January 1, 2018, of this year I started on a personal mission.
No more excuses — I’m going to do more of what I love — writing.
It’s been 2 and a half months with intentional writing — or at least I thought — until I read an article by Jonathan Greene . He wrote about a spreadsheet he uses to keep track of his daily writing — focusing on the average words per day.
This made so much sense to me and I don’t know why I never thought of it before. I work in sales, I set goals for business professionals and track their progress. We always work backward from the goal to figure out how many sales would be needed to achieve that goal.
Why had I not thought of doing this for my writing plan?!
I created my own writing tracker
After I read Jonathan’s post, I created my own spreadsheet with the formulas. Then, I started writing, daily. Every day I’d enter the total number of words I wrote and watch my average number of words per day increase.
In 7 days I wrote 5000 words, published 5 posts and commented on 8 articles. I’ve already doubled my average words per day from February.
Many people write that much in one sitting — but for me with a full time job — this was a huge accomplishment!
I won’t go into detail on my stats (at least not yet)! What I really wanted to share was how writing these words affected ME, not my numbers .
It’s important for us as writers to remember what writing does to our overall being.
How did writing 5000 words in one week affect my thoughts and my behaviour?
1 — Increased confidence
As we all know, the more we do something, the more confident we become. It’s no different for writing. My style of writing is in first person and I share personal things about my life — and I want to keep this style. Right before I hit publish on all my stories I always have that little doubt. The doubtful feeling is still there, but it’s definitely getting fainter.
2 — Increased motivation
Writing in itself is motivating because I’m doing what I love. The tracker makes it even more motivating. Like a challenge (and I love challenges!). How can I beat my score from last month. How can I reach 6000 words next week. This forces me to look at the target rather than worry about what might stop me from actually writing.
3 — Increased engagement
Funny, but the more I write, the more I find myself engaging with others. People comment on my posts, I comment on their posts, we’re creating and fostering a community of writers. Writers who want to do what they love, learn from each other and be the best they can be.
4 — Increased number of content ideas
The more I write, the more writing is on my brain. I am thinking of new topics and new ideas I want to share in every day interactions. I look at things in a different perspectives— picking out things from daily conversations and writing about them.
For example:
- I read someone else’s article and it gave me an idea for one of my articles.
- I listened to a podcast during my commute and thought of another topic to write about.
- In a few hours, I’m on my way to play guitar in front of an audience that I’m quite nervous about — guess what I did? Wrote an article about being nervous. (I’m still nervous, but I felt better writing about it!)
Let’s hope this continues to happen!
5 — Increased happiness
Writing makes me happy — so when I get to do more of it, then I’m a happier person. I’m happy I’m able to connect with other writers who love writing as much as I do.
It also makes me happy to come home from my day job and work on something that’s for me and my personal goals.
Final thought
Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard writing after a long day of work. That’s why I like the writing tracker — even if you write only 100 words — on that one day you’re tired — it still adds up. Then the next day, when you’re not tired, you write 800 words!
Then repeat!
If you haven’t read it yet, here’s my writing journey so far:
Follow my progress on achieving Top Writer status on Medium:
Let’s connect! Say Hello to me on Twitter!
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