Ray Bradbury advises writing a short story a week for a year to practice your writing. Stephen King prescribes writing a novel in 3 months, putting it away for a month, then coming right back to it for editing and finishing it up.

When I first started writing, I thought this was ridiculous. How could anyone write a short story in a week? A novel in 3 months! Impossible!

But as I spent more time in the chair, more time churning out words, these suggestions became more feasible.

I am not good at writing sprints. The most words I’ve written in a day is around 2,500. And that was spending a whole day in an AirBnB by myself. I realized I’m a slow and steady writer.

My daily goal is 1000 words. This takes me about an hour of dedicated writing time (since I use an outline).

So, at this pace, I can write 7,000 words in a week (a good short story length) and 90,000 words in 3 months.

My first novella is 30,000 words. My second is 20,000. My upcoming book? 40,000.

You’d be surprised how much you can get done if you sit in the chair, every day, motivated or not, and write.

Jump. Build, Fly.
F.C. Shultz