Member-only story
4,000 Human-Generated Words an Hour?
Experimenting with David Majister’s 4,000-word method in the AI age.
I’ve been thinking about David Majister’s 2021 post “Extreme Writing — How to Ride your Keyboard at 4,000 words per Hour” for over two years now. When I first read it, I was skeptical.
Speed writing enthusiasts have been around for decades. Drawing inspiration from Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts” technique, they advocate churning out as many as ten thousand words a day, in an effort to spam Amazon Kindle Unlimited and the rest of God’s green internet with as much thoughtless word salad as they can churn out on a daily basis.
So, I’ve never given speed writing advice much credit. That is, until I read Majister’s work. Majister’s method is a true writing exercise. For Majister the abundance is the point. The value of the exercise is in perfecting the flow state, finding that moment when fully-formed sentences begin to seamlessly flow from the tips of your fingertips, when you lose all countenance of your surroundings, of time and your own corporeal existence, and waking up to a full page.
Now more than ever, I think making the most of speed writing techniques matters. Even though current large language model writing outputs are not competitive with high-quality human capabilities, that matters little to people (read: those who would pay you for your writing skills) who are seeking fast, inexpensive, and tolerable results. Writers who want to stay competitive in the market would do well to learn how to streamline their processes. Remember, writers aren’t competing against AI-generated content, they’re competing against other writers using AI technology to help them write faster and better.
In this article, I explore David Majister’s 4,000-word per hour technique, how it works and how to adapt the technique to a post-AI world. If you thought you were a fast writer, prepare to 4x your output.
1THE TECHNIQUE
Adventures of a flow-state fiend
To his credit, Majister doesn’t suggest dictation, unlike most speed-writing enthusiasts. Instead, he suggests simply setting a timer for 11 minutes and going stream of consciousness for all of it, noting that on a typical day he can get…
