You Should NEVER Write More Than 200 Words As A New Writer

How I FINALLY started writing consistently after 6 years of trying

I’ve “started writing” 5 times in the last 6 years. Talk about inconsistent… It wasn’t until I limited my articles to 200 words that I was able to stay consistent.

There are 2 reasons why that restraint helped me, and why I believe every new writer should limit their articles to 200-words:

1. Forced specificity — and specificity is value

Mark Twain once wrote a 3-page letter to his friend.

In the P.S. he said, “I apologize for such a long letter — I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

This is the reality of writing — and what I call “the trap of balloon-writing”.

As you write, you’ll come up with many examples to support your point. As you write these examples, you realize there’s other topics that connect that you should include.

So you write about those topics as well, and before you know it…
Your article about, “The best post-workout Sauna routine” now talks about climate change and your recent therapy session.

Any other writers relate to this?

Specificity is value. This limitation of 200 word forces you to be specific. If you can only write 200 words, you won’t be able to go on tangents.

200 words is enough words to cover 1 topic, and no more.

2. No one is reading your writing

This sounds harsh, but it’s actually a blessing.

Each time I decided to re-try writing, I would spend 4–6 hours writing a single article. This single article would be 2,000+ words (I was a pro balloon-writer).

And you know how many people read them? 0…

This is because I didn’t know what was going to resonate with the audience that I wanted to build. I didn’t know what they want to hear, how I should present that info, whether I should use stories or facts, etc.

And one day, I asked myself… “Why is no one reading my articles? Am I a bad writer, are the topics un-interesting, are the headlines bad, am I presenting it in a way that the audience doesn’t care about?”

Honestly, I didn’t know… That’s when it occurred to me.

“Why am I spending 4–6 hours writing an article, when I don’t know if people will like it? Why don’t I spend less on time writing each article, but write more articles? This way I can test more ideas and see what people want.”

So I started writing 200-word instead of 2,000-word articles.

That’s when I learned that there were 3 types of articles that my audience resonates with. I would have never known this if I had continued to write 2,000+ word articles, because I wouldn’t have tested enough ideas to find the 3 that resonate.

When you’re starting out, it’s not worth your time to write long pieces of content.

Less is more.

It’s a better use of your time to write shorter pieces of content that test different ideas. Save the longer content for after you’ve grown your audience.

Free “stressed face” image from Crello