How To Become A Prolific Writer In Less Than 12 Months

2. If you’re on this blog for the first time then welcome. I want to talk to you today about my insights on how to become a prolific writer. This is something that I’m working towards doing, with my quest to write every day…for as many days as I can.

3. WHAT IS A PROLIFIC WRITER ANYWAY? A prolific writer is someone who writes consistently and therefore is able to build up an incredibly large volume of work. Writing prolifically doesn’t necessarily mean the work you produce is going to be incredible. But nonetheless, it’s impressive to be able to produce content consistently and over long periods of time. SOME EXAMPLES OF PROLIFIC WRITERS Isaac Asimov, Russian born author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University was a science fiction writer who was an incredibly prolific writer. He published almost 500 books. Other famous Prolific writers include Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Ezra Pound, Lope de Vega…and the list could continue – I’m sure there are many more.

4. BUILD ROUTINES, FORGET GOALS It is routines and systems that help you become world-class more than anything else. Practically – what that means is that for me – writing is a routine. It’s part of my daily life – to get up in the mornings and write. However, here and now – I wouldn’t even think of writing as a ‘goal’ anymore at all. It’s faded into the background and become part of my daily life. If this is something that you can build into your writing – you’ll be able to outproduce 95% of writers without even trying. Because you won’t be ‘trying’ – it’ll just become part of your daily routine.

6. THE POWER OF SHOWING UP This builds upon the one-sentence per day philosophy. If you just set a target of one sentence per day – it’s not daunting at all – even on the days where you really don’t feel like writing. What happens then when you have such a low target – is that you also tend to have a higher ‘appearance’ or ‘turn up’ rate. And overall – it leads to much higher production levels. I’ve written several posts about losing my will to write, alongside how to write effectively…

7. WRITE AT THE SAME TIME OF DAY My body and mind are primed to write in the mornings – and not any later in the day. Anytime I have written later – it’s felt strange. It feels like I’m doing the ‘right thing’ but at the wrong time. This is the power of building habits that is powerful when you aim to write prolifically. BUILD A WRITING RITUAL My writing ritual will be having a brainstorm about what it is I’d like to write about immediately before I start writing – and then to do some keyword research on Ahrefs and the like. I identify a low-competition subject that marries up with what I’m interested in discussing – and then I’ll put that keyword into the top of a Google Doc like I have today:

9. WRITE WITH THE DOOR CLOSED Stephen King talks about this concept and I absolutely love it. It’s this idea that when you put together the first draft of anything – You’re writing with the door closed – i.e writing for yourself. This is, to begin with, the most powerful way to write. Writing in this way will enable you to create great work. WRITE ABOUT THAT WHICH YOU ALREADY KNOW When I produce blog content – it’s all based upon the experiential learning I’ve had recently. As opposed to needing to go away and conduct independent research – I instead write about a specific experience or thought that I’ve had. It significantly speeds up the writing process.

10. MYTHS ABOUT WRITING PROLIFICALLY You should do it It’s worth underlining this – it’s definitely a choice. If your writing suffers when you write/aim to write prolifically – don’t do it. It has to have meaning for you. If it’s simply a vanity metric then it’s absolutely NOT what you should be doing Great writing is always written first thing in the morning Write in a time that fits your routine. My videos and my blogging all happen before I start my day job at around 9 am. That’s what works for me. More Hours = Great Writing I definitely see with me that’s not the case. Each morning when I write, it seems that somewhere between 800-1.5k words I begin to feel some level of resistance.

11. BUILD AN AUDIENCE As much as writing for yourself is important – building towards having some kind of audience will be critical to your success. It’s really difficult to write and not get any feedback whatsoever – which is why getting blog comments, positive feedback and the like will be an important part of your progress. DEVELOPING DAILY DISCIPLINE I think in the end this is what I’ve managed to develop over the last couple of months. I just get on with the actual writing and then tag my relevant team and that’s it done for the day. Like trying to build any habit – the first 3 months of building that habit are damn hard – but if you can push through – you’ll do really really well. This has become my realisation with my writing process – and I’m now trying to do the same with the video content I produce.

12. FINAL THOUGHTS Well – I hope this has been useful for you as you travel on your journey of becoming a prolific writer. I can definitely tell you that it’s an exciting journey and a road (from my very limited experience so far) worth walking. Write something, write anything – even if it’s just one sentence.