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Report · 2 min read

2,662,105 Words: The Mathematics of Prolific Writing

Breaking down the output: how many words per day, per week, per book. The quantified writing life.

ProductivityWriting

The Output

2,662,105 words across 68 published books. But what does that number actually mean in practice?

Daily Output Analysis

If we assume the 68 published books were written over a focused 2-year period (2024-2026):

  • Daily average: ~3,647 words/day
  • Weekly average: ~25,597 words/week
  • Monthly average: ~110,921 words/month

For context:

  • Stephen King writes ~2,000 words/day (~730,000/year)
  • NaNoWriMo target: 1,667 words/day for 30 days (50,000/month)
  • Average novelist: 500-1,000 words/day

Per-Book Breakdown

CategoryCountAvg LengthTotal
Short books (<20K)1711,886202,054
Medium books (20-50K)3036,7281,101,849
Long books (50K+)2164,6761,358,202

What Enables This Output

  1. Writing systems, not inspiration: The output isn't driven by waiting for the muse. It's driven by sitting down at the same time every day and writing.
  2. Genre variety prevents burnout: Switching between a thriller and a romance and a self-help book keeps the creative muscles engaged differently.
  3. No perfection paralysis: First drafts are allowed to be rough. Revision is a separate phase.
  4. Reading as fuel: The sheer variety of genres written reflects equally varied reading habits.

The Bigger Picture

The 68 published books represent only 4.4% of the 1,537 books in the archive. The rest — written between 2007 and the present — form the practice base that made this output possible.

Nobody writes 68 publishable books without first writing 1,469 unpublishable ones.

Full statistics at /statistics. The Living Bibliography at /bibliography.

— Report from the Inamdar Archive

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