A Thousand Words A Day, A Book In A Month

In this article, I want to share with you a technique that I am using to write a book in a month. I know it sounds kind of weird.

Why a month?

Starting is Easy, Sticking to it is Hard

Writing a book is such a common goal for entrepreneurs. Whether as a digital product to offer or just as a personal project to share our passion and knowledge with others, many of us have pondered writing one.

Recently, in my podcast about entrepreneurship in Spanish, “Nación de Emprendedores“, one of my interviewees talked about her experience when writing her first book. Alejandro Barrera, one of the most successful and well-known Spanish entrepreneurs, confessed that if he wakes up one morning and his businesses had disappeared, he would start again by writing a book.

However, I have personally always considered it a Herculean task.

When you start writing, you feel elated and excited. You have a wonderful topic to write about, and you feel that adrenaline rush all over your body. You are invincible.

Nevertheless, as days pass, we start to devote less and less time to writing. Maybe our other projects or the burdens of our daily lives leave us little to no time to sit down in front of our computers, or perhaps the initial excitement goes away.

I’ve found myself in that situation.

Writing a Book in a Month

If you follow my blog regularly, you know by now that one of my projects is the Digital Leaves blog. It is devoted to helping people willing to become freelance iOS developers take the leap, by learning Swift and iOS programming from scratch.

This blog has a powerful, emotional significance for me. Years ago, I broke the chains of my steady, 9 to 5 work at a cubicle, took the leap and started my career as a freelance developer. That experience changed my life forever. That’s the reason why I want to share it as much as I can and help others do the same.

Even though I started the blog years ago, only recently did I decide to take it to the next level. Since approximately a year now, I’ve been writing regularly every week. Also, I built a newsletter and my audience is growing by leaps and bounds.

As weeks passed by, I was bitten by the writing bug. Eventually, I got to a point where writing a whole book seemed like the perfect, natural step to take.

Why a Book?

I’ve always wanted to write a book.

I grew up in a house where we were actively encouraged to read. My mother, the owner of a large library, was particularly influential in the development of my passion for books.

Besides, I had already written a book to teach you to build your first iOS App in a day. I was offering it as a lead magnet to join the newsletter at Digital Leaves. Furthermore, the timing was perfect, the WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) by Apple takes place in mid-June. Usually, the interest for iOS development and learning to code for the Apple ecosystem skyrockets during the conference.

However, every time I have tried to write a book, I have failed after the first week. My problem? Lack of commitment.

This time, I decided that it was going to be different.

A Thousand Words a Day

Thus, I resolved to write at least a thousand words a day. In thirty days, that means thirty thousand words at least.

Enough for a first book.

It might seem difficult at first, but once you start, you discover it actually is not that hard. This article is over eight hundred words and can be written easily in 40-45 minutes.

What I think is really difficult is carrying on. Forcing you to write those damn thousand words every day.

Why Writing A Thousand Words Every Day?

Stephen King has always been one of my favorite writers since I was a kid. I remember reading “It” when I was just ten years old. I would spend the nights avidly reading it, scared as hell, waiting for the main characters to get to a steady, safe situation before being able to close the book. In his novel, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, he writes:

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

In fact, not only does he recommend to write a thousand words every day. He actually affirms to write two thousand words himself, every day.

Actually, writing one thousand words a day makes a big difference. As days pass, you find yourself much more comfortable writing, you write faster and more naturally, and you become better at expressing your ideas. The goal of writing a book in a month starts becoming not such a weird idea.

Thus, my call to action for you would be: find a way of doing it. Stick a post-it on your desk, set an alarm on your phone, or a daily calendar reminder. Set aside an hour every day to write. Find a comfortable, cozy and quite place, and put your thousand words on paper.

They don’t have to be good or perfect. That’s ok. Just do it, and keep on doing it.

The Results

Personally, the experience is being absolutely amazing. I’m in the process of writing a book in a month, and everything seems to indicate I’ll be able to do it. My deadline ends by mid-June, and half of the book’s already written. Of course, there have been days when I’ve not been able to reach the one thousand words threshold, or everything I produced was crap, but other days made up for it.

I would definitely recommend you, if you are planning on writing a book, or have just started, to set that goal.

One thousand words per day. A book in a month.

I will update this post as soon as I have some progress to share.