This Is What it Takes to Write Six Books in One Year

In online forums and on Facebook, I repeatedly read that fast writing is basically lousy writing.

Authors are most eager to spread such theses if they need at least one year for a book or have not published anything at all. What most of them have in common is that they can't live from writing. They do not succeed and insist that anyone who succeeds must be a fraud.

Others wish they could write so quickly and be so productive. They are not jealous of other writers' success, but they do not dare to do the same as successful writers. They say that an average person can't be so productive. Anyone who can do that must be an exceptional talent.

But neither the Haters nor the doubters are right.

Fast written books don't have to be of inferior quality to those that have been written over many months, and it is by no means impossible for most authors to produce at this pace.

If you can do something, you can do it faster than you are used to

One thing should be clear from the outset: a talent for writing and a good feeling for language must be present. You also have to master the craft.

If you don't have a feeling for what makes a good story, if you don't know how to create suspense and develop a character, you won't be a successful writer. Some things nobody can teach you. You can improve, but if there's no foundation of talent, there's nothing to build on.

But if you know what you're doing and can tell stories, you can easily write faster than you're used to now.

The stories we write down originate in our brains, and the concept of time is unknown to the mind.

In our dreams, we act out hours, days, and sometimes even weeks in a few seconds or minutes. We create the most complicated actions and the most amazing images in milliseconds. A dream that corresponds to only a few seconds of measurable brain activity may seem to us like it lasts for many hours.

But when we are asked to think up a similarly complex story while awake, we find it strangely difficult. We need hours and days to consciously think up scenes that simply come to us in our dreams.

The problem is that in the waking state, we are controlled by our consciousness. Like a grumpy critic, our minds evaluate each of our ideas and slow us down in our creative process by a thousand objections and doubts.

In dreams, this evaluation process is omitted. We experience unfiltered what our subconscious offers us.

But the consciousness does not allow ideas and thoughts that contradict our learned convictions. Most of us have learned to believe that it is not possible to write good books quickly. Those who are convinced that something is impossible will not even try.

Experience gives self-confidence

After my first book was finally finished, my whole world view changed. The finished book was proof that I could write books. Before, I always had doubts if I would ever finish, but suddenly I had the proof: I could finish books.

I was so euphoric by this experience that I soon started the second book. Because I no longer had such strong self-doubts and now saw myself as a writer, I only needed one more year for the second book.

It was finished seven times as fast as my first book. I could hardly believe it. What else could be possible?

Now I wanted to know what I was really capable of. Could I manage to write the third book in just six months? How would it be after that with three or even only two months?

When the spirit of research meets self-confidence, it can move mountains. Suddenly our idea of what is possible changes.

The more experience you gain, the less likely you are to get lost

Of course, self-confidence and curiosity alone are not enough to write a book within two months. Another essential factor is experience.

When I wrote my first book, for example, I didn't know that a story can quickly reach a dead end if you don't think about how the plot should proceed, at least in broad outlines.

At some point, I couldn't get any further because the plot had gone astray. Thereupon I developed writer's block, which cost me a lot of time. When I say that I spent seven years working on my first book, that includes recurrent writer's block. Phases like that could last weeks or months for me.

The second time I wrote a book, I learned from this mistake and roughly plotted the whole story.

This way, I always knew where everything should lead in the end when writing and was able to avoid unnecessary subplots and plot holes that were difficult to repair from the beginning.

With every new book, I gained unique, valuable experience and was able to eliminate more and more time-consuming mistakes.

The creative muscle must be trained

There are still many authors who believe that they cannot write without inspiration. They wait for weeks for the muse's kiss, and if that doesn't happen, they don't write.

Once you get used to this way of working, you eventually give up writing altogether, because the muse shows up less and less often.

Our creativity, which some consider a mystical creature and call muse, wants to be challenged. If we do not use it, it withers away. Our inspiration starves while we wait for her. She wants to be summoned when we sit down at the desk and tell her that she is needed now.

The more often we call her, the more willing she will come and reward us with great ideas. Creativity is like a muscle. If we use it, it becomes more robust; if we don't use it, it dies.

You must master the rules

Are you one of those who say that art has no rules? If so, you have probably taken this opinion from someone who has not yet achieved anything in art.

Those who insist that writing has no rules to follow will always be unsuccessful, and rightly so. Writing, like any other art, is a craft to be shared. Creativity is essential, but even more important is the craft that is part of practicing the art in question.

I have read exposés in which the author could not decide whether to write a fantasy novel or a thriller. These authors also had no interest in suspense, character development, heroic journey, three-act structure, or narrative perspectives.

If an author ignores all these things, he or she will later find that nobody wants to read his or her books.

But the worst thing about this ignorance is that the writing tempo suffers.

Without knowing how a plot structure works and which elements a good story needs and which don't, a story usually gets out of control.

Too many useless characters and subplots are added. Additional time levels are used, and sometimes there is page after page of text that only explains some background instead of advancing the story.

A book that is created this way inevitably becomes much thicker than it should be. Out of ignorance of the elementary rules of storytelling, the book suddenly becomes three times as thick as it would be necessary to tell the story excitingly and logically.

Knowing the rules is, therefore, an essential part of being able to write faster.

Deadlines are your friends

What have we got so far? We know that we need a healthy self-confidence and a lot of experience and that we can train our creativity like a muscle.

We also know that we have to know and master the rules of our craft and our genre.

In any case, this should be enough to write your next novel in only two months. But most people still don't succeed.

What is the missing ingredient?

Here comes a principle that is known as Parkinson's Law. It says, "Work always expands for as long as you give it time to get done."

You could say that. Anyone could say that. How do you know that's true?

To answer that, you only have to be honest with yourself once. Ask yourself the following question: If your boss entrusts you with a new project and gives you exactly two weeks to make a presentation on that project, what do you do?

The first thing you would ask yourself is how much work is involved. So you look at all the available information and realize that the estimated time for the presentation will be about eight hours. So the two weeks your boss has given you are very generous.

This is when Parkinson's Law strikes because suddenly, the task doesn't seem particularly urgent. So for now, you ignore it and postpone the start of the job.

With a fair amount of certainty, you end up just finishing the presentation on the last day of the deadline, when you could have finished it the day after your boss gave you the assignment.

That's what it's like when you write a book. If you set yourself a deadline of one year, you will most likely need a whole year.

That's the best-case scenario. Most of the time, independent artists make the mistake of not setting deadlines at all. This often leads to the book never being finished.

So a healthy self-confidence, a lot of experience, a strong creative muscle, and the mastery of the rules are undoubtedly important. Still, without a further ingredient, you won't get anywhere. Without a deadline, your work will always take much longer than necessary. Once you set a deadline for your project, suddenly, everything changes.

With a deadline, it is suddenly really possible to write a novel in two months. I know this because I have experienced it myself over and over again.

I'm not particularly talented, nor do I type particularly fast (I probably type even slower than most of you).

So if I can do it, you can do it. If you have confidence and experience and know the rules, you can write a novel in two months.

Have confidence in yourself! You have nothing to lose, but a lot to gain. If you can write so fast, it can change your whole life in the medium term. I've experienced it myself.

In November 2018, I was able to quit my job, and so far, I only live from writing.

If you have big dreams, you have to try the impossible. Most of the time, you find out that the impossible is not so absurd.