The Thing That Stops All Writers From Completing Their Book

What if I told you that you could write a book and finish it in just under a few months? And I’m not talking about a short story but a proper novella or novel.

Since the release of What Shines with the Dawn, I’ve had a lot of people share with me, “I wish I could write a book,” or “I wish I could write that many words.” Sometimes they mean it as nothing more than a complement that is lovingly received, while other times, they speak as if they have a book—or a dream—that is too far out of reach.

We've all been there. The task personifies itself in our minds as an insurmountable hike up a summit, where word count is transformed into miles and measures that peak—that finish line—high within the clouds; its final end: no one knows.

I’m happy to tell you that while the finish line is far away, the speed at which you can reach it is closer at hand than you realize—even if you have a full-time job, kids, going to college, etc.

The answer is hidden within the time given to us.

Let me ask this, if you have an iPhone, when was the last time you glanced at your “activity” section under the “Battery” tab in your general settings? If you are about to glance now, or already have and are just returning to this blog, you might be shocked at just how much time we spend on other apps at the palm of our hand.

I first thought of this when I had TikTok on my phone (before I removed it from my phone years ago). Like many who were new to the rising social media app, I found myself “doom scrolling” late into the evening: watching endless short videos of anything from the latest prank trends to the latest dance trends.

Then, like snapping out of a trance, I glanced around the room, and quickly closed the app, horrified to discover that I had spent at least two hours that evening on TikTok alone.

What is more horrifying…I had done the same the day before that and many other days prior (and after).

My creative mind began to twirl a question in my head:

How much time would I be spending in a year if I scrolled on TikTok for just two hours a day?

A few seconds at my phone’s calculator brought me to a feeling that I could only describe as both shocked and disturbed. Let’s revisit the calculator together.

Assuming that someone spends just 2 hours a day for 7 days a week, the total is 14 hours a week spent on social media.

Simple math. Did not really need a calculator for that. And while shocking as it may be, when you multiply that by 52, the number of weeks in a year, the answer is even more astounding.

If you spent just 2 hours a day for the whole year doom scrolling on social media, you would spend a grand total of 728 hours in a year.

At first glance, this number is rather huge! Enough to make us go “Wow,” right? But then a new horrifying question came to my mind:

How many days is 728 hours?

That answer alone almost made me depressed.

If you took 728 hours and divided it by 24 hours, you would get 30.34 days.

Yes, you read that correctly. Just over thirty days—an entire month—spent doing nothing but doom scrolling—no bathroom breaks; no lunch breaks; no sleeping. For thirty straight days you are doing nothing but spending every waking hour staring into your phone screen.

Some of you are probably pulling out your phone and entering this data into your calculator, thinking, “There’s no way this can be true!” It’s ok. We’ve all been there.

Now let’s take those numbers and use them to measure out writing a book.

For easy math, let’s say that someone can write (approximately) 500 words an hour. Taking those 2 hours that would have been spent doom scrolling and using them to write instead, you would have written 1,000 words that day.

Let’s say that you wished to only write 5 days a week, you would have written 5,000 words that week.

This means that if you chose to write for the whole year, you would have written 260,000 words.

Just for reference, the average novel is roughly between 100,000 – 150,000 words long, and the average novella is anywhere between 18,000 – 60,000 words long. Some would caculate this to be even lower in number.

In one year, you would have averaged at least 2 novels at 125,000 words long and/or 5 novellas at 50,000 words long.

Obviously, the goal is not to “cram write” for the sake of writing. A good quality story is always better than rushing to push out a book for the sake of saying you did so.

And many of you are possibly looking at those numbers, those hours, and thinking that the summit is still just as far out of reach. I’m here to tell you that the summit is far but never out of reach; and you can get there quicker than you are imagining.

Again, I encourage you to look at your phone’s screen time activity, and let’s compromise. Take one hour to scrolling on social media and spend the other writing. Even if you did, you would still have written 130,000 words in a year, which is equal to 1 good novel or quite possibly 2 - 3 good novellas.

And I get it! Usually, those hours spent on social media are sliced up throughout the day: 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there, and 5 minutes for our bathroom breaks (guilty). Nevertheless, if we are honest with ourselves, we do spend most of our time on social media in the evenings, wasting our nights away with doom scrolling.

My mission here is not to condemn anyone. I completely understand using something like social media to cleanse our palate as we step out of our work hours and into our personal time, or just for simple fun and pleasure.

The purpose of this blog is to show all of us that whether we like to admit it or not, the time is there; we are just mismanaging it for entertainment rather than exercising the talents assigned to us for the time we walk this earth.

Imagine where you could be in 6 months from now—or even just 3 months! You may have zero desire to even write a book, but I believe you do have a task that’s been buried in the back corners of your mind, haunting you for possibly months, if not years, by now.

Alex Hormozi once said,

Your nine to five isn’t killing your dreams. Wasting your five to nine is.

Whether you are planning your first novel, or a project completely different, the time is there. The two questions we need to ask are what is the price of bringing our assignments in this world to life, and how much of our time's currency are we willing to pay to bring them to life?

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What Shines with the Dawn

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