If You’ve Ever Felt Bad For Being A Slow Writer, Read This

There is no denying we live in a productivity and hustle culture, where more is more, and quantity is often favored over quality. Even around the writing community you’ll see a lot of language around writing more, writing fast, and publishing frequently. Even fellow aspiring writers’ well-meaning updates on social media about how they have 3K word writing session today can put the slow writers in doubt: Am I doing something wrong?

We are individuals

Full stop, no. If you are a slower writer, you are not doing something wrong. Nor is the fast writer. I believe in the individuality of process. The same way telling a night owl they should wake up at 5 am to get an hour of writing time in before their day job is setting them up for failure as it doesn’t play to their strengths, telling a slow writer to just write faster is a bit of an oxymoron.

Let’s clarify what I mean by fast and slow. I don’t mean how fast or slow those fingers fly by on the keyboard. I mean how much you can write in a writing session, or how much you can write in a day, or a week. I’m talking about how long it takes you to finish a project. Slow is not one measure and slow writing doesn’t always come from the same place.

Perhaps you’re slow because on top of your day job, house chores, taking care of kids, etcetera, etcetera, you only have so much time and energy left to write. Or perhaps you are very meticulous over your words, favoring getting the writing right (or close to it) the first time around. Or perhaps no matter how much writing time you set aside, your creativity taps out after a certain point sat in the writing chair.

That’s what I mean by slow. That the accumulative efforts of your writing process is slow.

But accumulation matters

Terry Pratchett famously wrote 400 words a day, and that resulted in his 41 book Discworld series, amongst his other published works over his esteemed career. But he was dedicated to writing those 400 words every day, even the day of his father’s funeral.

That’s not a lot of words per day. This article is 1.5x that.

400 words x 7 days a week = 2,800 words per week.

2,800 words per week x 52 weeks per year = 145,600 words per year.

That’s about one and a half of his Discworld novels per year.

(Of course, there would be editing and cut stuff and rewrites, just absorb the pure math for a second.)

Now, I give you permission to not write on the day of your father’s funeral. While I strive to write every day, it’s not uncommon for me to miss a day, or sometimes two, a week depending on other obligations or energy levels. And I choose not to write on Christmas or on family vacation, worrying rather about being present than worrying about word count.

But even with my imperfect system, the accumulative bits of writing consistently, several days a week, adds up. I write this blog this way. I wrote the many short stories I’ve published this way and put in collections this way, as well as the novel draft I’m currently querying to agents.

Slow and steady can win the race.

Wrapping it up

When the whole world is hustling, it feels like you don’t hustle along with it, that you will be left behind. But that is also a recipe for burnout and turning the thing you love into the thing you hate.

If you are a slow writer, embrace that about your process and realize that consistency and accumulation are more important to your progress than trying to imitate the cram writers and fast writers.

This article was originally published on Medium by me.

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