Brandon Sanderson And The Maths Of Writing

Practicing The Write Stuff Issue #19

Some of you will know who Brandon Sanderson is…some won’t. Brandon is one of the best selling fantasy and science fiction writers out there and has done some interesting things with Kickstarter that we might look at in a future Issue of PTWS. Brandon likes to teach and if you want to write fiction you can find a series of lectures on YouTube that are free and worth checking out.

This Issue though is based on this video - How To Write 100K Words A Year:

Before we get going….if you write 100K words a year, that’s a book a year. Do that for 20 years and you’ve written 20 books. 20 books is a career - the number of writers who complete books is small. The number of writers who complete 20 books is exponentially smaller.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves…let’s break down what Brandon is teaching.

#1 Identify Your Average Writing Speed

Although Brandon is talking to fiction writers, his teaching applies to non-fiction writers too.

The first task to do is to identify your first draft writing speed.

Brandon says:

The average writing speed for writers is between 200 and 500 words an hour…writing new prose…in a story.

Although non-fiction writers have to include research into their writing, these figures are just as applicable to non-fiction writers. And for first draft writing, non-fiction writers can put placeholders in their text that can be edited in future drafts.

Brandon suggests that if your average writing speed is below the 200 words per hour mark, then you can work on improving that with ‘good habits.’

Now every writer is different, and every writers gets words on the page in different ways. But I think Brandon’s suggested words per hour are conservative and writers of all types should be aiming higher.

Here are five ways that will help you improve your writing speed:

1. Eliminate all distractions. Turn off email. Turn off mobile phone. Just focus on your writing. Not only do these kind of easy distractions take you away from writing, but they also break your concentration and you can waste valuable time going back to your writing and working out where you were. If you’re really struggling….take a notebook and leave your computer/mobile phone and go somewhere else and write in your notebook.

2. Learn not to overthink the writing part of the writing process. Remember that this is a first draft, it can be edited. Hemingway famously said: ‘The first draft of anything is shit.’ So you’ve got to learn to get words on the page that can be edited.

3. Learn to write in flow. This is definitely something that I’ll come back to in a future issue of PTWS. Writing in flow state has so many benefits for writers. My experience is that flow state writing allows for getting serious amounts of words on the page, and that the quality of those words is higher than ‘conscious’ writing. I can’t remember which author said this, but their words were: ‘When I’m writing in flow it’s like taking dictation from my subconscious…and I can’t get the words on the page fast enough.’

4. Learn to type properly. Your mileage may vary on this one, but if you can type properly - and it’s a mechanical skill that anyone can learn pretty quickly - you can get to the point where you can type at 80 to 100 words a minute. If you’re writing in deep flow - see above - you can produce a couple of thousand words in 30 minutes or less. If you are a ‘hunt and peck’ typeer and want to learn to type properly….do yourself a favour and learn using the Dvorak keyboard layout. (Up to 50% faster than writing on a QWERTY keyboad.)

5. Learn to write by dictation. If you can’t type and you want to write faster than writing by hand allows, then you can dictate. Although this might seem like a new thing, it’s not. Pulp writers Edgar Rice Burroughs and Earle Stanley Gardener both used dictation. Science fiction writer Kevin Anderson uses dictation and has published over 140 books. Anyone with a mobile phone has got voice to text software in their phone. Even talking slowly, you can speak more words per minute than professional typists can type. This could be a viable option for you - plus you can combine it with going for a walk which takes you away from distractions. (If I was going to do this…I’d buy a phone just for dictaction and take the sim card out of it!)

So key steps: work out what your average writing speed it; develop better writing habits to improve it.

#2 Once You Know That Average Speed….100K Words A Year Is A Game Of Math

Here are the investments of time needed to write 100K words a year:

• If you write 250 words an hour, you need to find 8 hours of writing time a week.

• If you write 500 words an hour, you need to find 4 hours of writing time a week.

• If you write 750 words an hour, you need to find just over 2.5 hours of writing time a week.

• If you write 1000 words an hour, you need to find just two hours of writing time a week.

Note that this is first draft writing time. And you need to allow for editing time too.

Whether you’re writing books or creating other long form content - or even short form, twitter-thread style content - my feeling is that 100K a year is the minimum price of entry for creators who are writing.

Synchronistically I was reading Morgan Housel’s Same As Ever book last night, and the importance of writing 2000 words a week is found in the chapter called Tiny And Magnificent. The sub-title for that chapter is….

#3 …When Little Things Compound Into Extraordiny Things

Here’s a quote from early in the section:

Most catastophers come from a series of tiny risks - each of which is easy to ignore - that multiply and compound into something huge. The opposite is true: Most amazing things happen when something tiny and insignificant compounds into something extraordinary.

Morgan gives further examples. For example, real GDP per capita has increased 8X in the US in the last 100 years. That’s simply the compound interest effect of GDP Growth of around 3% a year.

Or take heart disease.

The age-adjusted death rate per capita has declined more than 70% since the 50s. Morgan estimates that’s 25 million Amercians who haven’t died from early heart disease in the last 65 years. And he thinks the reason this isn’t an enormous story of scientific success is that the decline per year is around 1.5%. Which is too small for most of us to take note of.

The magic comes from the compound interest effect of that over 65 years.

This is why it’s so important to create a writing habit and write at least 2000 words a week/100,000 words a year. Over 20 years that’s approximately 20 books worth.

Sidebar For non-fiction it’s possible that 100K words a year is more like 40 books over a 20 year spell. Even getting 10 books on Amazon makes people look at you differently - I’m living proof of that!

Those stats by the way are writing just 2000 words a week. If you can combine writing in flow with faster input (either via correct typing or dictation) then 1000 words an hour is not that much of a stretch. If you wrote for two hours a day, 5 days a week, you’re hitting 10K words in a week. That’s 350K words in a year. That’s maybe 7 or 8 non-fiction books.

Do that for 10 years and you might have 70 books behind you. 20 years of that pace…and you’ll be up there with Kevin Anderson’s 140 Books!

Before 70 books or 140 books starts to sound ridiculous….do the math of writing, and if you commit to that, compound interest will take of the rest. When you get interviewed and someone asks:

How have you written 70 books in 10 years?

You can simply answer: I write 10,000 words a week. Compound interest takes care of everything else.

#4 But Writing Every Day (or 5 Days A Week) Is Hard?

Writing every day - or 8 hours a week - is not hard. Especially if it’s only for two hours. Seriously, go interview an ambulance driver or a Doctor who works in A&E (ER if you’re the other side of the pond). Those jobs are not just hard, they’re gruelling mentally and physically.

What’s hard with writing is counter intuitive. It’s not the actual writing, it’s the sitting down and getting started. Beating resistance every day and getting your words done, that’s a tough battle.

Sidebar: for more on resistance, read Pressfield’s The War Of Art

What you need to do is create a series of tiny habits that help you sit down and get started.

My habits are:

1. Sit down at my computer.

2. Open up the appropriate writing file. And close everything else. Turn my phone off.

3. Look at it.

4. Get up and go and make coffee.

5. Come back to my desk.

6. Start my ‘writing playlist.’

7. Start typing.

8. My writing playlist lasts an hour. When it’s finished I make more coffee. Walk around for 5 minutes. Then set it playing. And start writing again.

That’s it.

The biggest of those steps is associating my ‘writing playlist’ with doing the actual writing.

I’ll deal with that in Issue #20.

The Ride Out

There’s only one qualification you need to be a writer. That’s to write. Brandon Sanderson talks about fiction writers and that 100K words a year is the kind of figure they should be aiming at to get started.

When you work out your writing speed and do ‘the math of writing,’ it’s much more achievable than it sounds.

If your average words per hour count is on the low sound (anything under 400 words per hour), then there are ways to increase that number. Watch Brandon’s video that I posted up top. Read the five suggestions and identify the ones that would make you more productive…and start working on increasing those numbers.

Where’s The Red Line?

Normally I post my ‘red line’ chart here with my daily numbers of words written on the non-fiction book I’m desperate to write and publish. Only resistance played one of its sneakiest tricks on me this week - while I wrote over 500 words on this project on Monday and Tuesday, I’ve not writen more than 300 words on it since. That’s because resistance suggested I write a music book instead….so since Wednesday I’ve been ‘assembling’ a book that I’ll finish and upload for a proof tomorrow. (My music books are normally 105 pages long….this one is going to weigh in at around 130 pages. And yep I started Wednesday.)

Touch wood when this one has gone to Amazon…I can get back to the non-fiction project and pick up and the ‘red line’ will be back for Issue #20. Speaking of Issue #20…

Issue 20

As mentioned, in Issue 20 I’m going to talk about creating a writing playlist and training yourself to write in flow.