Elliot Kessler

This week, I took on a challenge. I decided that I would write a full novella in the span of one week. That meant writing around 4,000/5,000 words every day. That’s a lot of writing, especially when I’m so used to writing 2,000/2,500. The crazy thing is that it worked, and I sustained that daily word count.

What happened?

I’m a naturally lazy person. I enjoy writing, but if I can find an excuse to not put as much work in that I have to, I’ll likely use it. I don’t work as much as I should. I hoped to start pushing out a lot more stories since I published my first novel, but the amount of effort I was putting in wasn’t going to cut it. I had to change something. I had to push myself even further.

I saw a post on Instagram where an author started a challenge for himself, but his was a little different. He chose to write a novel in a week. A novel! One week! I thought that was crazy. No one can do that!

Lo and behold, he accomplished this task. His novel was short, sitting at around 53,000 words, but it was still a novel that he wrote in a single week. I took six months for the Kindle Vella edition of Liar’s Legacy, and I took three months for the first draft of Fossil. This guys took one week. I figured if he could do that, then surely I could write a measly novella in one week, right?

I got to work. I started with a short outline to make sure I didn’t spend too much time thinking about what the next scene should be, but I made sure not to make it too detailed because I still wanted some freedom.

Monday came, and I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. By the time the sun came down, I found myself with 4,772 words. The next day, 5,697. Clearly, I could write more than I thought I could.

But what changed that I started writing so fast? Why could I suddenly write a whole novella in one week?

I set a goal and I set a deadline to reach that goal. I wanted to write a story, and I gave myself one week. The determination to accomplish this task is what drove me to write faster and work harder. I took less breaks and spent most of each day either writing or thinking about the story and the direction I wanted to take it.

Today is the final day of my challenge, and I only have a little bit left before the story is finished. The first draft is sitting at a little over 19,000 words right now, which isn’t much, even for novella standards, and I definitely don’t have enough story to increase that word count by more than 1,000/2,000 words. But hey, I’ll have written a book in one week. How awesome is that?!

But the point of this article isn’t to showboat. It’s to show that we can do so much more than we think we can. All it takes is a little push. Set a goal. Set a deadline. Promise yourself a reward. Find some way to motivate yourself that works best for you, and I am certain you will find some crazy results.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.