No. 102 Why writing a thousand words a day doesn't work (unless you do thissss)
No. 102 • 12/10/2025
Dear readers,
Last week I talked about the plight of "writers who don't write." How for them:
- Insight without expression leads to overwhelm
- Overwhelm leads to despondency
- Despondency leads to not writing
- Not writing leads to unexpressed insights, which leads to—you guessed it—more overwhelm
What I didn't mention was why these should-be writers don't curl up in a ball and give up trying to write all together. In reality, they're actually super active. Not writing, of course. But, actively trying to fix their situation.
The 1000-words-a-day writing routine
If you're like me, you've at some point hit a wall and decided to bust through with a Better Writing Routine. The most common? Writing a thousand words a day. It's the practice I learned from Beat writer, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, it's the practice I started and stopped too many times to remember, and it's no doubt the practice many of you have tried.
Which makes sense. Just look at all these fancy writers and their fancy daily word counts:
- Ernest Hemingway: 500 words
- Margaret Atwood: 1,000 to 2,000 words
- John Grisham: 1,000 to 2,000 words
- Stephen King: 2,000 words
- Mark Twain: 1,400-1,800 words
- Jack London: 1,500 words
- Anne Rice: 3,000 words
- Michael Crichton: 10,000 words
If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us, right?
The problem isn't free-writing. It's what you do with it.
Regardless of whether you find writing x number of words a day helpful, you need to do something with what you've written. Your daily brain-vomit can't just live in twenty Moleskine notebooks on a shelf under your desk, sorta off to the side, covered in guitar chords, an old paint set, a box of cassette tapes, extension chords, and some cartridge thing you plug into the wall to charge AA batteries.
The fancy writers above don't just write to purge their sleep-brain (which is certainly a good thing to do). They go back.
Everyday, Stephen King revises what he wrote the day before. He goes back. Same with Maya Angelou who clocked around 2,500 words a day. Did she stop there? No.
"Maybe after dinner I’ll read to [my husband] what I’ve written that day. He doesn’t comment. I don’t invite comments from anyone but my editor, but hearing it aloud is good. Sometimes I hear the dissonance; then I try to straighten it out in the morning."
Maya Angelou went back.
The system I teach, looks at free-writing not only as a cathartic, head-clearing, copy-generating exercise (which it certainly is), but as a vital, practical resource. You go back. You pull from it. You use it to create something else.
The System for Writing Master Course get you passed brain-dumping
The System for Writing Master Course (starting January 2025) teaches you how to process your free-writing, scratch notes, jots, reminders, and scribbles. You'll learn how to go far beyond brain-dumping, and deep into inspired, generative thinking and writing.
To learn more, click below:
The System for Writing Master Course
Seriously, click that ^^^. If you're reading this, there's a very good chance you'll be into it.
Then, go and get a copy of my latest book, A System for Writing: How an Unconventional Approach to Note-Making Can Help You Capture Ideas, Think Wildly, and Write Constantly - A Zettelkasten Primer, which will prime you for the course in the most delicious wayyyyy.... 🎶
“This book is a relief. I've read many books on note-making and zettelkasten, plus taken programs, and each seemed to make it more confusing. I really needed a guide to distill it into the most important pieces, with an emphasis on getting the whole thing to work. That's what this book is.” — Roam
Again:
[COURSE] [BOOK] [COURSE] [BOOK] [COURSE] [BOOK]
Looking forward to hanging with you and getting into the thick of connected thinking and inspired writing.
Love,
Bob
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