I’m shocked at how many writers are still working on their book years after starting. I really don’t want to hurt any feelings on this. Life gets in the way. Priorities change. I’m not judging any particular person. I just wonder what’s taking so long.

You see, professionals finish their work. I can’t tell you how many times a friend has told me they mean to do something but never find the time to get to it.

  • I’m going to learn to play guitar
  • One day I’ll start my own company
  • I have a great idea for an innovative product
  • I want to write a book
  • I’ll write my own video game someday

The list goes on. Nearly everyone has aspirations like this. How many actually make it happen? Very few. It takes a lot of effort and other priorities tend to get in the way unless you are truly committed and frankly a bit of a self-starter.

Effort It Takes to Write a Book

Take writing a book for example. 81% of Americans say they want to write a book someday whether it be fiction, non-fiction, or even a cookbook. What would it take to accomplish a goal like that?

Let’s say you only write for 15 minutes every day. Assume you are a slow typist and can write 200 words every 15 minutes (less than 5 words per minute). An average-length novel has around 60,000 words on the low end. So spending only 15 minutes a day (4% of your time each day), you would complete a novel every year.

Doubling that amount of time to 30 minutes per day would allow you to complete two full novels every year. Spending Sunday afternoon writing each week for a couple of hours would get you the same results without having to write any other day of the week.

Publishing a Book is Rare

Following this example, publishing a book actually turns out to be a rare achievement. There are close to 7.2 billion people in the world. There could be as many as 15 million books published this year. Even if we say every author wrote one book each of that 15 million (but we know many authors publish multiple). That would mean less than half a percent of the population would have written a book.

To put that into perspective, that’s 1 in 500 people. There are 320 million people in the U.S. and yet less than 650,000 people will publish a book.

What this all means is that publishing is a huge accomplishment.

Make It Happen. Finish What you Started

Maybe this is a wake up call. I’m writing this as much to jazz myself up as to hopefully inspire others. I want everyone to create. I want everyone to succeed. It doesn’t have to be a book. Is there a big project at work you’ve been talking about? What about a pet hobby you’ve allowed to languish? Go do it. Make it happen. Be rare. Be a pro and finish what you start.