thesis whisperer 10000 words a day

How to write 10,000 words a day

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9 Tips for Writing 10,000 Words a Day

So, you’ve seen the videos circulating around Authortube, and you wonder if it’s too good to be true. You want to try writing 10,000 words a day .

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Original photo by Gregory Culmer 

I’m here to reassure you that it’s entirely possible, though I’ve never tried writing 10,000 words a day on purpose. It just sort of happens.

The first time I experienced it was in grad school. I had one semester to complete my graduate thesis project, and your girl did it. But that meant that I was writing a novel in two and a half months, and then submitting it to my committee so they could read it, and then defending it.

That was not an ideal situation, but I did it while working two jobs, and I finished on time. It’s also worth noting that I have no recollection of what’s in that novel.

The next time I did it was while I was working as a ghostwriter at a terrible publishing company. On Fridays, we had to submit the work we’d done to our boss, and it never failed that by Fridays, there had been too many meetings and phone calls during the week to actually write. So I’d show up on Friday mornings, a 20-ounce travel mug of coffee in my hand and an energy drink in my purse, and I’d try to write the required 6,000 words I needed on each of the projects I was working on at the time.

That was a really taxing time, and I definitely gained 60 pounds while working there because all I did was sit, chug caffeine, and go eat fried foods at lunch. Also, the environment was incredibly toxic, so I got really good at producing cortisol.

And more recently, I did it while staying at St. Francis of the Woods on my solo writing retreat . It was so nice to get away and just sit down and let my hands fly across the keyboard. And before I knew it, I was over 11,000 words. It was a good writing night.

So, all of this is to say that I have a few tips to help you when it comes to writing 10,000 words a day. Whether you’re backed into a corner with deadlines, or have some time to just enjoy the writing process, these 9 tips are crucial for success when it comes to writing 10,000 words a day.

Writing 10,000 Words a Day

001: make an outline..

I’m sorry, pantsers. This one might sting a little.

The thing about writing a significant amount in a day is that you have to know where your story is going. You don’t have to know every last detail or bit of dialog, but generally, you have to know all the major plot points that get you to the end.

The reason you need to know this is so you don’t waste time trying to figure out what to write next.

Most of these tips are ways to help you keep your brain focused and your hands flying across your keyboard. If you don’t have an outline, you really can’t do either of those things.

I’m not saying that you have to give up the joy of writing and surprising yourself with the story that emerges. I am saying that you have to know the general direction of the story, and let it flow.

My outlines aren’t very detailed. It’s usually a set of bullet points that are maybe one or two sentences. But this is enough to keep me going to the next point.

And before you ask, yes. You can be more detailed if you want. That will actually make it easier.

The key here is to have the outline available, and to read it before you start each writing sprint so you know what you need to do as you go.

002: You have to like what you’re writing.

This is something I try to explain to my students every single, stinking semester. If you hate the topic you’ve chosen, it’s like gargling broken glass to write about it.

So if you find that you’re stuck just because you hate the thing you’re writing and you’ve always hated it, it’s time to change. Notice I said “always hated it.” There are times in the writing process where you will hate story ideas you once loved. That’s because writing a novel is like shooting your body out into space and no one can save you. Naturally, there are parts of that you wouldn’t enjoy.

But as long as you remember that initial love and excitement, it’s enough to keep you going.

(This isn’t anything like shooting your body out into space. I think I just imagined someone shooting themselves out of a cannon past Pluto, and somehow their dedication to the mission sustained them and they didn’t burn out from the force of being shot out of the atmosphere. If it works like that, then yeah. This metaphor works.)

So if you’re finding that writing 1,000 words seems impossible, and the idea of writing 10,000 words is just outright insane, it could be that you don’t feel that connection to your story. And that’s okay. Because now, you get to start over with something you do like.

003: Practice.

As an instructor, one thing I see again and again is students assuming they can sit down and write a whole paper in a night. Some of them can, and some of them can’t.

The ones who can are the ones who have built up their writing muscles. No, not actual muscles. In fact, I would argue there are a lot of us writers out there who are really soft and supple in places where you’d expect a muscle to be. No, we’re not weak. We’re just really good at sitting at a desk, which is something more active and strong folks can’t do. SO THERE. WE’VE BEAT YOU AT SOMETHING.

The writing muscle is actually just the ability to sit down with your butt in the chair and your hands on the keyboard. It’s what keeps your head in the game and enables you to keep cranking out words.

If you haven’t practiced sitting down and writing for long stretches of time, writing 10,000 words out of the blue isn’t going to happen.

Think of it like this. You wouldn’t run a marathon without training, would you? Then why would you do a writing marathon without training?

Luckily for you, writing marathon training has way less running than marathon training. And all you have to do is carve some time out to write as often as possible, and then you’ll be able to pull a 10,000 word writing marathon.

Don’t forget to check out my posts on building a writing habit , or good writing routines . These will definitely help you build up those writing muscles.

004: Write, don’t edit.

I cannot emphasize this enough, and I feel like a broken record.

When you’re writing, you’re writing. When you edit, you edit. You can’t do both at the same time.

I talked about this in my post about how to write fast , but it should be repeated until everyone chants it like those damn sheep in Animal Farm with their “four legs good, two legs bad.”

The part of your brain that generates ideas and lets them flow is different than the part of your brain that’s critical and knows how to change stuff. I think. I don’t know. I’m not a neuroscientist. What I do know is that if you keep going back over what you’ve written, you’re not allowing yourself to get in that creative state of flow. And you’re not making any progress because you don’t have the necessary perspective.

You can edit sentence by sentence until you’re blue in the face. But one sentence is a drop in your novel bucket. And honestly, one sentence is fairly meaningless unless you look at it in the context of other sentences that surround it. And I would argue you should edit with that context in mind. So if one sentence is bad, it doesn’t necessarily become great when you read the next sentence. But it does have more meaning, and could potentially change the way you edit that bad sentence.

Maybe this is all true, or maybe I’m full of shit. Either way, let your writing brain write and your editing brain edit, and don’t let the two of them know that they’re sharing an apartment inside your skull like the Odd Couple.

005: Set a timer and sprint!

I love writing sprints. Everyone should do them.

A writing sprint is simply where you set a timer for any amount of time (I recommend 15 or 20 minutes) and write that whole time. You’re also pushing yourself to write a little faster.

I started experimenting with these in grad school when my friend, Sarah, and I met up in the grad lap to work on our projects. She was insane and doing a dual masters, and as I mentioned, I was an idiot who was trying to write a novel in a semester.

Sarah brought coffee and snacks, and we did a fuck-ton of word sprints. Without that, I wouldn’t have finished, so I owe Sarah a debt of gratitude.

Now, I swear by sprinting. Not necessarily for all writing. (I never do for blogs, just because it’s so easy to breeze through. They’re so short in comparison.) But when it comes to fiction writing, or any long project where I want to make incremental progress, sprinting is key.

And my favorite thing about sprinting is that it makes you get faster. If you haven’t read 2k to 10K by Rachel Aaron or 5,000 Words a day by Chris Fox , you need to. Both are super short and easy to read. And the best part? They give you a guide on how you can improve your writing speed with sprints.

So if you’re angling for writing 10,000 words a day on the reg, start sprinting. You don’t always have to, but it’s a great way to improve your writing speed, and it makes hitting 10,000 words a lot easier.

It’s also really cool to see how the number of sprints to get to 10,000 words decreases over time as you get faster.

006: You have to take breaks.

No one just sits down and writes 10,000 words in one sitting. You have to take breaks to go to the bathroom, to stretch, or to get your seventh cup of coffee.

(Just kidding. I stop after the fifth cup.)

This is the beauty of the sprint system. You sprint for a bit, and then you get a break. And when I say break, I mean a real break.

I think the key to keeping up the writing productivity is that you give yourself time away from the screen. If you’re furiously sprinting away, and then for your break you pull up Twitter, well. That’s not really a break, is it?

I recommend taking a step away from your computer. Maybe set a timer and go outside for 20 minutes. Or you can go make a snack. Or clean the kitchen. Or do some laundry.

The key to a good break is to let your brain rest and to stand up for a bit. This gives you time away from the computer, and makes it easier for you to tackle your next sprint.

If you only spend time sitting at your desk, it’s really hard to keep going because you’ve been stuck in the same place all day.

So do three or four sprints, and then get up and move your limbs. It will make it so much easier to keep going.

007: Go all in and enable the the tunnel vision.

One of my greatest pet peeves in life is when I find myself multitasking. Sure, you may think you’re being productive, but you’re really just frazzling yourself. (Can you use “frazzle” that way? I AM GOING TO DO IT REGARDLESS.)

The fastest way for me to feel burnt out and stressed is to try to do too many things at once. And if I have too many tabs open or I’ve got too much noise in the background, or I’m trying to text while I work on something, it just kills me.

You may feel like that’s the way to get stuff done. I feel like that’s the way to make minimal progress on multiple things.

So I go all in on most things. That means if I’m writing, I’m only writing. If I’m texting with someone, I’m only texting. And this is key for writing 10,000 words a day, because you need as much time as you can get to hit that word count.

If you’ve chosen this quixotic AF writing goal, you need to go all in. If you’re writing 10,000 words a day, then that’s what you’re doing that day. Embrace the tunnel vision and only allow yourself to write when it’s time to do those writing sprints.

008: Don’t try this without warming up.

Here’s a fun fact: I never start writing with a sprint. And that’s because I know I need to give myself a bit of time to get back in the swing of things. You wouldn’t go into the gym and try to bench press 200 pounds first thing. You have to warm up.

So I like to take some time and go over the outline while I sip some coffee. Then, I like to write maybe 100 to 600 words. This gets my fingers moving, and gets me back in the headspace of the novel.

This is generally all I need to warm up. It’s nothing special, and it’s something that you can do first thing in the morning. It also just makes it easier to hit that 10,000 word goal because you start off by having chipped away a bit already.

It’s not much, but it’s like that little kick that enables you to really pick up speed.

009: Don’t make this your daily writing goal.

And finally, allow me to caution you. I know it can seem really cool to write 10,000 words in a day. It’s not. It’s how you burn out.

Sure, you may want to do this in order to finish a novel in a week. And maybe that will work one time. But it’s not something that is sustainable, especially if you have a day job.

Depending on how fast you type, you may be able to knock out 10,000 words in a three or four hours. And you may think that you can do that every single day after work.

Here’s why you can’t: Your brain needs rest. So unless your day job just consists of downtime where you get ample rest and don’t ever have to solve any problems or stare at a computer screen, you can’t do this.

Don’t demand so much of your writing that it makes it impossible for you to write. Don’t think you’re a machine that can magically always fill your writing time with magical word sprints that net you 10,000 words.

Sometimes writing is slow. Sometimes, you need to just chill and enjoy a day where you don’t hit 1,000 words.

Have You Tried Writing 10,000 Words in a Day?

Have you ever attempted the daunting task of writing 10,000 words in a day? What are your tips and tricks? Anything I missed? What do you recommend to keep writers on track?

Related posts:

• Good Writing Routines
• The Importance of Goal Setting in Your Planner
• The Best TV Shows To Get Lost In
• Stop Being Your Own Safety Net

3 Responses

I wrote 50,000 words in 10 days for my Mphil Thesis .

I’ve done it working for a company I hated trying to meet deadlines and I gained 40 pounds so I understand what you’re saying for sure.

I literally thought something was wrong with me because of how fast I put on the weight!

It’s easier to do when you are writing about something you love but after two days you more than likely will burn out.

Awesome article and great tips!

I have totally experienced weight gain while writing stuff I hated for a terrible company! There’s something psychologically that happens to make you gain weight faster when you’re super unhappy. (Or so I think.) Thanks for reading!

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Language Teacher Education Researcher Network at The University of Manchester

Is it possible to write 10,000 word a day?

An interesting blog in the popular ‘The Thesis Whisperer’ on how to write 10,000 words a day. Before you get too excited and imagine your whole thesis being written in less than 2 weeks and graduating a whole year earlier than expected, it does say that this is only possible if you know exactly what you want to write about first (which in my mind could take several months). It does however contain some really useful advice on writing in general, and the 10,000 words part is more geared towards those getting to the end of the process. It would be interesting to know what those of you who have submitted in the recent past think of the ideas in the blog post.

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One comment

Knowing what you want (and have to say) may speed things up but so often we all write our way into understanding as drafting leads t further thinking and further reading and further thinking and further drafting, and so on ….. would we want it any other way?

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how to write a 10000 word essay

One of the most popular posts on the Thesis Whisperer is  How to write 1000 words a day and not go bat shit crazy . Last year a Twitter follower brought to my attention a post called  How I went from writing 2000 words to 10,000 words a day  by the fiction writer Rachel Aaron.

I did a double take.

Can you really write 10,000 words a day? Well, Rachel says she can, with three conditions:

1) Know what you are going to write before you write it 2) Set aside a protected time to write, and 3) Feel enthusiastic about what you are writing

I read the post with interest. Much of what Rachel did conformed with what I suggest in my earlier post, but I couldn’t bring myself to really believe Rachel’s productivity claims. To  regularly  write 10,000 words: It’s the dream, right? Imagine if you could reliably write 10,000 words a day, how long would it take to finish your thesis… A week? How about a journal paper – a day?

Impossible!

Or so I thought.

I’m now a 10,000 words a day believer because I have been watching students write even more than this in a single day at the Thesis Bootcamps we run at ANU.

The Thesis Bootcamp formula was developed by Liam Connell and Peta Freestone of the University of Melbourne. Thesis Bootcamp (and the veteran’s days which follow) is a total program designed to help late stage PhD students finish their thesis document (In some countries this document is called the ‘dissertation’, but I will use the Australian term ‘thesis’ here). The Thesis Bootcamp concept is simple – put a whole lot of PhD students in a room for a whole weekend and set them the goal of writing 20,000 words each.

Yes – you heard me right.

At every Thesis Bootcamp we have run, at least one student will achieve this goal, and many write many more words than they thought they would. . In this post I want to reflect on Rachel Aaron’s threefold advice and put in the context of thesis writing.

1) Know what you are going to write before you write it

Composing a Thesis requires you to do different types of writing. Some of this writing is ‘generative’ in that it helps you form and articulate ideas by… just writing as much as you can, not as well as you can. It works best when you don’t second-guess yourself too much. The philosophy is ‘make a mess and then clean it up’. Perfectionist writers have a problem doing this, which is why we see so many perfectionists at our Bootcamps.

At Bootcamp we teach our students to focus the generative writing energy to productive effect. An important step in this process is for the student to spend at least a week making a ‘Thesis map’  before they come to Bootcamp. The map is essentially a series of sub-headings which the students use as prompts for composing new text, or re-using existing text.

Students, particularly those in the humanities and arts, tend to agonise over the Thesis document ‘structure’. I think the anxiety stems from the idea that ‘Thesis structure’ is some kind of perfect platonic form they need to discover.

It’s important to realise that structure is made, not found. Thesis structure is strongly influenced by disciplinary precedent and the content of the Thesis itself. A history PhD it might follow a timeline from the past to the present; a science PhD might echo the order of the experiments that have been performed. But multi-disciplinary PhDs, or PhDs in ‘polyglot’ disciplines like education, do not have comfortable traditions. This means you’ll have to make the structure up. Try the following technique:

• This Thesis contributes to knowledge by…
• This Thesis is important because…
• The key research question is….
• The sub-questions are….
• Decide how long your Thesis will be. Most universities have a maximum word count. Aim for your Thesis to be at least 2/3 of this total (it’s likely you will write more than this, but this gives you some wriggle room).
• Make a document with chapter headings and word counts next to them. Include an introduction of 2000 – 3000 words followed by up to seven chapters of equal length and a conclusion of around 4000 – 5000 words.
• Under the conclusion heading write a rough list of points you think will go in there (hint – these should be answers to the research questions you have posed). Study these closely – have you got data, theories, evidence and arguments to support these conclusions? These concluding points, singularly or in combination, will form the ‘key learnings’ of the Thesis – the knowledge and ideas you want your readers to absorb.
• Each chapter should have at least one key learning in it, maybe more. Under each chapter heading note the key learnings in the form of a brief synopsis of up to 300 words. This synopsis is like a mini abstract that explains what the rest of the chapter will be about.
• Then make a list of the material you will include in the chapter as dot points. Don’t worry about the gaps and stuff you haven’t written yet – just make a note of them. These should be short sentences that will act as subheadings
• Now ask yourself: If, at the end of the chapter, I want the reader to be convinced of the validity of this key learning, what needs to appear first? What comes next? And so on. Rearrange or write new subheadings as you go until you have arranged all the subheadings of the chapter in a way that tells the research story.

Following these steps will help you to create the Thesis map – but it’s important to remember that this is merely an aid to writing, not a plan set in stone. You can change, add and move stuff around as you write.

In our Thesis Bootcamps we ask students to just pick a spot on this map and start writing as fast as they can, not as well as they can. Does this generate perfect thesis ready text? Not necessarily, but many students say that the writing they produce at Bootcamp is clearer than the writing they did before it, when they are worrying over every word. I think the thesis map is a big part of this clarity because it keeps the focus tight.

MYSELF ESSAY 5 (300 WORDS) My name is Sulekha; I read in class 9th standard in…

This organising technique works best for very late stage thesis students, but it can be a way of creating order at any time in your journey and working out what you need to find out or write more about. I’ve made a so you can make one of your own.

2) Set aside a protected time to write

I’ve written so much about this, so I wont rehash it all here. If you are interested in some techniques and ideas for creating protective writing time, have a look at the

3) Feel enthusiastic about what you are writing

I think this is the ‘secret sauce’ in the 10,000 words a day recipe. Rachel Aaron did some deep analysis of her productive writing days and compared these to the occasional not-so-productive days. The days Rachel was able to write 10,000+ words were the days she was writing scenes she had been ‘dying to write’ – she called these the ‘candy bar scenes’. Days where she found it hard to muster 5000 words a day she was bored with what she was writing:

This was a duh moment for me, but it also brought up a troubling new problem. If I had scenes that were boring enough that I didn’t want to write them, then there was no way in hell anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn’t love it, no one would.

In the fiction world the answer to Rachel’s dilemma was simple – make the boring scenes more interesting! Unfortunately in Thesis World this is not always possible. There will always be parts that are functional and unexciting; I call these the ‘dry toast’ sections – you need to do a lot of unproductive chewing before you can swallow.

There’s a term that describes this process in gamer culture – ‘grinding’. Grinding is being forced to perform the same action over and over again before you can ‘level up’ in the game and get more powers / weapons / armour or whatever. The level up is the pay-off.

One of the most genius ideas Liam and Peta incorporated into Bootcamp was the squeezy lego blocks. We give these out for each 5000 words written in a particular colour order: green, blue, red and gold. The blocks clip together to make a little lego ‘wall’ that the students can display at their writing station. When first presented with the idea of the blocks the students laugh, but all too soon, they are typing furiously with single minded purpose – to get the next block. We have a little ceremony every time someone gets a block, clapping them as they walk up to write their name on the board. It’s cheesy, but it works to turn writing from a source of pain to a celebration. So think about how to reward yourself for every 5000 words written.

Up for the challenge? Have a look at the testimonials on our . I’d love to hear about other ways of doing writing marathons and what you think about this kind of ‘binge writing’.

If you are an ANU student,

If you are in the UK,

In “Getting things done”

In “On Writing”

I’ve been doing medical writing and translations, and all work comes with tight deadlines, but the normal speed always was 2500 words a day or 10 standard pages. I know people who were able to go up to 4000 words, but quite honestly: how can one be sure about quality of such writing? Is the goal just in quantity or is it in something worthwhile? I’d never believe every single word in a 10K word writing a day is in its right place, or has the shade of meaning which makes any writing unique and worth reading. It’s also physically very tough. After typing some 100 pages in 4 days I was always sick: wrists and shoulders were hurting, and over years my eyesight worsened a lot. Maybe she is dictating this using a voice recognition software? However, that requires a lot of editing. 40 standard pages a day is bit overdone. Just my thou

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We wrote a 36,000 word book in a single weekend (yes, really)

Ok, it wasn’t a fancy academic book, but still…

I want to share how we did it, and what we learned about generative AI in the process, but first some context.

For a long time, my friend Professor Narelle Lemon and I have talked about writing a book called ‘Rich Academic / Poor Academic’. The title is an obvious riff on the bestseller from the 90s called ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, which contrasted the Dad who played by the rules in his public service job (and was poor), with the entrepreneurial Dad, who did not respect the rules (and was rich).

To be clear: ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ is a thoroughly terrible book. I don’t suggest you read it, and yet… There’s something in the playing by the rules and getting stiffed thing that rings true, especially in academia.

Universities are ‘greedy institutions’ that happily exploit our goodwill and passion for our work, as is demonstrated in the wage theft scandals we read about in the papers . Many academics we know – including you perhaps – are extraordinarily talented, but do a lot of unpaid hours. This tendency starts in the PhD and only gets worse over time (if you’re new here, welcome: try not to step in the overwork shit- it’s everywhere).

Narelle and I try to avoid giving an in-kind donation of time to our employers. We use time outside of paid hours to make money on the side. We use this extra money to attend conferences, buy books, access expensive subscription services (looking at you ChatGPT), hire in help, and get the latest equipment. Basically to buy stuff our universities won’t pay for, but which helps us do our jobs. We both earn enough extra income to cause us headaches at tax time: Taylor Swift would call this a ‘champagne problem’.

We think more people should have champagne problems like ours. We often evangelise academic side hustles with colleagues, but talking about money at an academic social event is a bit like farting in an elevator. Most people don’t want to admit they are interested – publicly. Privately people ask us for advice all the time. I did a blog post on the topic of side hustles in 2020 and realised I had a lot to say, maybe a whole book worth of things. But I could not get a conventional academic publisher interested in something ‘so niche’. Eventually we decided to self publish.

The problem was, we could never seem to find the time to write it… But with the help of Claude Opus , we finally did write the book. It was pretty exciting to punch out 36,000 words in a single weekend!

You can buy Rich Academic / Poor Academic directly from Thesis Whisperer here , for the price of an almond latte in South Australia ($5.37 AUD).

You can also buy it from my ko-fi site here

So – enough context. How did we write a whole book in a weekend?

What we didn’t do was get the AI to ‘write it for us’.

Taking a lead from Ethan Mollick’s new book ‘Co-intelligence: living and working with AI’ , we invited AI into this collaboration.

As I’ve written before, the use of GenAI is complicated and fraught with ethical and ( potentially ) legal issues. However, for this project, I was less conflicted. Rich Academic / Poor Academic is not a research piece; it’s a ‘how to’ book, based on our experience and opinions. We wrote it on the weekend, in our own time, using our own computers with our own software subscriptions. The book took a total of 26 human hours to write (I’ll give you a more detailed breakdown of how the time was spent below). So far it has cost us around $1600 AUD, most of the cost relating to accommodation in lovely Victor Harbour, South Australia for our writing retreat 20–21 April.

While preparing for the retreat, I experimented with Claude Opus , my new internet AI boyfriend, (sorry ChattieG – I still love you, but you know – as a friend). In my opinion, Claude is the best of what Mollick calls the ‘frontier’ AI models. Claude is described as more ‘literary’ than other LLMs; it certainly has superior reasoning skills and a huge memory, which makes it a better companion for academic work.

On the Saturday, we drove to a nearby town to charge the car and get a coffee. During our coffee chat, we threw out most of Claude’s outline and re-imagined the book as a mini ‘company manual’ in four parts:

• The creative department: what to make and sell
• The marketing department: how to get people to buy what you are selling.
• The finance department: how to manage money, do online commerce, deal with the tax department and manage your IP with your academic job requirements.
• The HR department: how to manage yourself and the work, upskill youself and make decisions about why and how to delegate to others.

We then had a wander around the shops and a leisurely lunch, during which we refined our outline, filled gaps and decided which bits we each wanted to write. Back at the ranch, we got stuck in.

The first challenge of co-authorship is blending two or more distinct writerly ‘voices’ together (less important in the sciences, where the ‘voice’ is more standardised). To make what I call an ‘AI voice cocktail’ that sounded like both of us, I primed Claude with some of our existing writing.

First, I gave it the PDF of Tame your PhD , a compilation of my best blog posts from 2010 to 2018 – around 42,000 words. Noting Ethan Mollick’s advice about giving the LLM time to think can improve performance, I asked it to analyse my writing and give me notes on how to improve. It gave me an extensive analysis and list of suggestions, following up with a nice affirmation:

These are fairly minor suggestions, as your writing is already quite polished and effective for your target audience. The conversational tone, humor, empathy and practical focus are great strengths that make your advice uniquely relatable and valuable for PhD students.

I then gave it 2 book chapters and a blog post from Narelle’s Wellbeing Whisperer blog and asked it to analyse her style. Again, it gave me a long, detailed analysis and ended with thoughts about how to blend our voices:

Narelle’s personality and values come through in her writing. Her enthusiasm for helping others optimize their potential is palpable. To incorporate elements of Narelle’s style into your own writing, you could:

• Adopt a more overtly motivational, strengths-focused tone
• Develop memorable concepts and catchy terminology
• Structure your pieces around problem-solution-strategies
• Provide bullet-pointed action steps
• Pose empowering questions to engage the reader
• Allow your authentic voice and values to shine through

The goal would be to maintain your signature style – informal, humorous, anecdotal – while layering in select components of Narelle’s more inspirational, self-help oriented approach. The balance will depend on your audience and goals.

I did a few tests asking it to use this voice to write about different topics, giving it feedback until I felt it had the blend of Narelle and I right. Then I began drafting my sections of the book.

In line with my existing practice, I did quite long, detailed prompts with lots of specific words. Claude is more intuitive than Chattie and can cope with quite sloppy phrasing, like this:

Now we’re going to write a session about publishing ebooks. Let’s do a step by step guide to preparing an ebook (without heaps of detail) and an explanation of the various platforms for selling them. At the end let’s make sure the reader manages their own expectations about the profit they might get from an ebook – basically the message is don’t give up the day job! The power of a self published ebook, like this one actually, is that you occupy someone’s book shelves and establish your value as a thinker. Give an example here of Inger’s book ‘Tame your PhD’, which was a compilation of blog posts serving as a great ‘front door’ to her blog (which was chronological and hard to access). Tame your PhD was bought and shared by people and still brings in business and kudos to this day, especially after she updated it in 2018 to more than 40,000 words and a lovely new cover. Over the last 10 years or so this book has brought in about $6000, all while only costing as much as a cup of coffee. Large volumes of sales over a long tail period are fine, but you can’t live on it – over this period it would bring in less than $1000 a year. People should instead think of ebook publishing as a way to become more influential and perhaps be asked to do more lucrative consulting and teaching work.

It gave me about 800 words in response. In the first part, about ebooks, it gave me banal stuff I could read anywhere on the internet, for example:

Step 1: Identify your topic and target audience Before you start writing, take some time to clarify the focus of your eBook and the specific audience you want to reach. Consider your areas of expertise, the unique insights you have to offer, and the pressing questions or challenges your target readers are facing.

Step 2: Outline your content Create a clear, logical structure for your eBook by outlining the key sections, chapters, and sub-topics you want to cover. This will help you stay organized and ensure that your content flows smoothly from one section to the next.

To be fair, I had left it up to Claude about what to write and it only knows the internet, what else should I expect! However, it did provide a structure to write into (and over), so I transferred the text into Obsidian and got to work.

Here’s the final version of those two steps on making ebooks (notice how much more ‘wordy’ I am than Claude):

Step 1: Identify your topic and target audience Before you start writing, take some time to clarify the focus of your eBook and the specific audience you want to reach. Consider your areas of expertise, the unique insights you have to offer, and the pressing questions or challenges your target readers are facing. The good thing about ebooks is they can be as long or as short as you like, so do a bit of market research as well. Look for examples of books similar to the one you have in mind, which sell well – how long are they? What sort of tone and style does the author use? Learn from other people’s success.

Step 2: Don’t get all academic and weird about it. We wrote this book in a hurry and honestly – we think it’s better than a lot of our more ‘careful’ prose. We roughed it out using the database/note taking system ‘Obsidian’, which enabled us to produce the draft in ‘chunks’ and move them around. We tried to focus on providing clear, actionable insights and examples that will help you solve problems and achieve goals. For once we didn’t have peer reviewers looking over our shoulder – sweet relief! In a book just made to sell you can really let your freak flag fly and break the conventions of your normal academic ‘voice’.

Claude did do much better on the second part of the chapter on ebooks, where I asked it to manage expectations. I’d given it a bunch of figures and thoughts – it cleaned these up well. Here’s part of the original response to my prompt:

Instead, think of your eBook as a long-term investment in your personal brand and credibility. A well-written, informative eBook can serve as a powerful “business card” that introduces new readers to your work and positions you as a thought leader in your field. Take Inger’s book “Tame Your PhD” as an example. Originally a compilation of blog posts, this eBook served as a great “front door” to her blog, which was chronological and sometimes hard to navigate for new readers. By packaging her best advice and insights into a concise, affordable eBook, Inger was able to reach a wider audience and establish her expertise in the world of academic productivity and success.

This only needed a light edit – to change the last line, which was not accurate:

By packaging her best advice and insights into a concise, affordable eBook, Inger was able to reach a wider audience and establish her expertise in the world of research education.

In his ‘Co-intelligence’ book, Ethan Mollick describes AI as a kind of ‘alien mind’ and this observation rang more and more true as I worked with Claude on this book. The trick to getting good results, I discovered, was to continue in the same discussion window, building a version of Claude that ‘knew’ this topic and how I wanted it to write. Claude ‘remembered’ our whole conversation and used this, somehow, in its responses. As we worked together, it got better and better at a ‘one shot’ answer. It seemed natural to tell it when it did a good job, so I lavished praise.

I remembered Mollick claimed that asking the AI to ‘take a deep breath’ before responding improved results (it works !). Perhaps praise worked similarly? Narelle and I are both teachers. We had a nerdy conversation about different types of feedback we give students and Narelle suggested a technique common in primary school teaching, to encourage kids to reflect on their learning: instead of saying ‘well done’, we started asking it to tell us why we were praising it. For example, at the end of an exchange about content management systems, I said:

I can’t improve on that Claude – excellent job. What did you think was good about it?

It gave me more than 500 words in response, breaking down various stylistic elements of the text, and ending with:

Overall, the piece effectively combines an engaging narrative, practical advice, and a focus on personal branding to create a compelling and informative guide to building a website for one’s business. By striking a balance between conceptual ideas and concrete recommendations, the text provides readers with a solid foundation for navigating the website-building process and creating an online presence that truly reflects their unique voice and expertise.

This targeted praise dramatically improved output, but the performance boost came at a cost. I was steaming along, late in the afternoon when, all of a sudden, Claude started to ‘get out over its skis’, giving me more exaggerated responses to my prompts. It would lean hard into metaphors and use a lot of exclamation marks, almost like a toddler who had too much sugar, for example:

“So go forth and upskill, my solo research friend! Embrace the joy of lifelong learning, and watch as your superpowers grow stronger with each new skill you acquire. Because when you invest in yourself, you’re not just building a better business – you’re building a better you. And that’s a pretty darn awesome return on investment, if you ask me.”

I had to start telling it to calm down ( “That was not quite right Claude – can you try again, but a little less excitement please” ). This worked for a time, then response time got slower and slower. Suddenly, I got a warning that I only had ‘7 prompts left’, then 6, then 5… then it locked me out and told me to come back in four hours. Apparently Claude was holding so much in memory that the compute required for my answers was too high – Anthropic started timing me out to service other users.

I fired up ChattieG, but after the sophisticated conversations I was having with Claude, it felt inadequate. Since it was getting near dinner time anyway, Narelle and I went for a walk on the beach. And in Australia, well – the beach is something else:

As we walked, we reflected on the irony of the moment: how energetic we humans felt compared to our ‘tireless’ AI, who was clearly worn out. Claude was sharing cognitive load in ways we couldn’t easily define because, objectively, we still ended up spending a lot of time on crafting text.

I use ‘Timing’ on my Mac to keep track of my time on different tasks. I find this data helpful for forward planning and reporting purposes. Here’s a graph from Saturday:

As you can see, I spent 5 hours and 46 minutes writing in Obsidian and 1 hour 46 minutes talking to Claude. On day two I only spent 25 minutes talking to Claude, the other 6 hours and 57 minutes were all editing:

Mollick suggests readers value text written by AI less than text written by humans. I hope buyers of our book will not feel this way because this book is a true collaboration between all three of us. Claude could have written this whole book without being edited by us… but I don’t think you would want to read it. Narelle and I could have written the book without Claude, but I doubt we would ever have finished it. Speaking of, we didn’t expect to finish the whole book and get it edited on the weekend, but we did! This was a welcome change from other writing retreats where I have come away with a half finished project, feeling frustrated.

We decided to simply release Rich Academic / Poor Academic as a PDF for now. We’ve priced it the same as an almond latte I bought on the Sunday at lunch. Downloads will tell us if you are interested enough for us to make a second release. If so, we will invest time and money making a proper ebook in different formats and commission a cover (this will cost about $1500).

If we do a second release, we’ll incorporate reader feedback, maybe adding more sections (although 36,000 words is already a lot!). We’ve got a feedback survey linked in the text of the book. If you buy it and read it, simply follow the link and fill in the quick reader survey: we will send you our second version for free.

You can buy the book directly from Thesis Whisperer here.

It’s nearly two weeks later and I am still digesting this experience.

In his ‘co-intelligence’ book ( which I hope I have convinced you to read ), Mollick has a couple of metaphors to describe the process of collaborating with AI: the centaur and the cyborg. In centaur mode there is a hard separation between the AI and the human. In cyborg mode, you it’s a back and forth blend.

We were definitely cyborgs that weekend. Claude didn’t actually take away the drudge: it was a true creative partner. It did act as a cognitive support for my frail human self. At the end of our writing retreat, instead of feeling flat out exhausted, I was still bursting with ideas. Narelle has blogged her observations about the weekend on the Wellbeing Whisperer if you’re interested to compare our reflections.

As Ethan Mollick points out, we are currently using the worst AI we will ever work with. I don’t know what the future looks like, but Apple just announced it will incorporate AI onboard the Mac, so I wouldn’t have to pay a subscription service, or worry about privacy risks, exploited labour and environmental damage. An AI trained on my own data? Under my control? Making my life easier and more fun? Take my money!

If you want to talk to me about this post, I hang out mostly on Threads these days. Or Linkedin.

Love to hear your thoughts.

Related Posts

My favourite ChattieG writing prompts

Using ChattieG to write good

Rich Academic / Poor academic – making an academic living in Covid times

If you liked my post on ChatGPT recently, I talk more about it and new stuff I’m doing with Chattie on the latest On The Reg Pod with Jason. Listen to the episode via your favourite player.

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The Thesis Whisperer is written by Professor Inger Mewburn, director of researcher development at The Australian National University . New posts on the first Wednesday of the month. Subscribe by email below. Visit the About page to find out more about me, my podcasts and books. I'm on most social media platforms as @thesiswhisperer. The best places to talk to me are LinkedIn , Mastodon and Threads.

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