How to write a well-researched six-thousand-word article in four days flat
...with no help from AI, back in the day!
Another Quora article from the past…
I don’t write as much as I used to over there, but every once in a while, an old answer will get another upvote, and remind me that this one was worth the time it took to write. Here’s one of those old ones (well, from about four years ago) and my answer. You can read it and upvote it here if you are a Quora fan.
Question: Is it possible to write a 6,000 word essay from scratch in 4 days? How?
Sure. I’ve done it, though I wish I could have polished it a bit more (too late now). A colleague of mine regularly writes almost 10,000 words per day, including entire articles and essays. (He has even written a book about how to write prodigiously.)
His secret, and mine, and many others,’ I’ll bet: Pre-writing.
This involves research skills and analytical thinking skills that let you tackle a completely new topic and write a coherent, compelling 6000-word feature article in just four days. Freelance writers do this as a matter of course, although their assignments and gigs will differ widely (I used to be one).
But pre-writing also involves a constant and strategic curiosity about the world around you, especially certain areas that interest you, or your areas of professional or academic expertise.
Just one example: if you enroll in a course, do the reading. All of it, both Required and Recommended. Preferably as soon as you get your syllabus. You’ll be amazed how easy the class assignments become, how interesting the class discussions become, when you have actually prepared for them. Not “enough so I don’t sound like an idiot” but when you’ve really done your due diligence.
Another example: I can speak extemporaneously for at least an hour about almost any topic in space exploration and space development. I could write a 6000-word article about it at the drop of a writing prompt, in one day easily, if I had no other competing commitments. But that’s only because I have spent the past forty-five years immersed in astronomy, human spaceflight, aerospace engineering, space colonization schemes, all that sort of thing. I haven’t yet begun to “research” the topic you’ll give me, but as soon as you give it, I’ll have an opinion, and my research won’t be “oh, what is this new thing, I must begin from zero and come up with 6000 coherent words somehow.” My research will be looking for facts I know are out there, checking to be sure my hunches are correct, looking for appropriate quotes and making sure I attribute them properly (“did Ben Bova say that, or Greg Autry, or Peter Kokh?”).
A liberal-arts education will give you a good overall foundation of knowledge and insight into nearly every sphere of life, and give you “first principles” from which you can figure out a lot of other things when they come up.
After that, just keep learning, and train yourself to learn quickly, to think connectedly, to research efficiently.
You’ll do fine!