How Long Does it Take to Write 1,000 Words?

This post was first published in April 2020 and updated in January 2026.

How long does it take to write 1,000 words? If you’re writing a novel … the answer matters!

If you’re aiming for an average-ish novel length of 80,000 words, then that’ll take you 80 days, writing 1,000 words per day. (Those don’t have to be consecutive days, of course.)

Knowing your writing speed is important, so you can figure out how much time you need to set aside to hit that 1,000 word mark!

How Long is 1,000 Words (in Pages)?

On 8-1/2” x 11” paper (US) or A4 paper (UK), in 11-12 point type, 1,000 words is about 4 pages double-spaced or 2 pages single-spaced. 

If you have a lot of choppy dialogue (e.g. in fiction) or very short paragraphs, your 1,000 word piece could be more like 3 pages single-spaced or 5-6 pages double-spaced.

Here’s an example piece, single-spaced in 11 point Arial (the Google Docs default). I’ve taken it from The Railway Children by E. Nesbit, and it’s 1,001 words long.

As you can see, it takes up almost 2 pages.

Here’s the same piece again, this time double-spaced. It runs to nearly four pages:

These days, if you have a length requirement from a writing competition, editor, writing coach, etc, it’s likely to be in words, not pages.

But if you are told how many pages to write instead of being given a word count (e.g. “bring 4 pages to share at our next meeting”) then it helps to know that 1,000 words is about 4 double-spaced pages.

Is 1,000 Words/Day a Realistic Goal?

Over the years, I’ve seen quite a few writers aiming to write 1,000 words a day. It’s a nice round number (and it’s what Stephen King advises as – slightly alarmingly – a minimum target in On Writing).

But I think 1,000 words a day is too high a target for most writers.

For many novelists who work long hours or have a lot of family/household responsibilities, writing 1,000 words for 80 days in a row definitely isn’t realistic. But 1,000 words a couple of times a week might be.

Which brings us to …

How Long Does it Take to Write 1,000 Words?

If you want a very rough rule of thumb, it takes 1–2 hours to write 1,000 words.

How quickly you write, though, depends on how experienced you are, what you’re writing, and how your own personal creative process works.

You’ll want to keep in mind that:

#1: Experienced Writers Are Usually Faster Than First-Time Novelists

The more you do something, the faster and more efficient you become.

If you’re a beginner writer, it might take you three hours to write something that an experienced writer could complete in an hour: that’s totally normal, and you’ll find that you write faster over time.

#2: Your Preferred Writing Process Will Affect Your Speed

Some writers draft fast but then rewrite and edit what they’ve written a lot.

Other writers draft their article or story much more slowly, but then don’t need to rework things nearly so much.

The entire writing process may take roughly the same length of time either way, but the speed of drafting 1,000 words could vary significantly.

For some writers, 1,000 words is a great working day. For others, 1,000 words is something they can dash off in less than an hour. It depends on so many different factors—which I discuss in my post on Why Some Writers Are Much Faster Than Others.

What really matters is how long it takes you to write 1,000 words.

Figuring Out How Long It Takes You to Write 1,000 Words

Personally, I can normally draft 1,000 words of fiction in an hour. Sometimes it takes a little longer; sometimes I’m a little faster. But that gives me a good sense of how long it’ll take to draft, say, a 3,000 word chapter. I tend to write fast and edit a lot, and many writers are looking at more like 500 words per hour, so two hours to write 1,000 words.

To figure out your own “average time to write 1,000 words” you first need to:

• Record the total length of your writing sessions across a week.
• Record the total number of words you wrote that week.

Worked Example

For instance, let’s say you’re working on a 3,000 word chapter of your novel.

You work on it for 2 hours on Monday, 1.5 hours on Tuesday, and 1.5 hours on Wednesday, for a total of 5 hours. Your draft is complete and (helpfully!) came to 3,000 words exactly.

It took you 5 hours to write 3,000 words. That’s a rate of 600 words per hour.

So how long did it take you to write 1,000 words?

• First, divide the total number of words (3,000) by 1,000 = 3
• Then, divide your total time (5 hours) by 3 = 1 hr 40 minutes

It takes you 1 hour and 40 minutes to write 1,000 words.

Tip: You might want to track your average over time to see whether it changes. You may also want to track whether you’re faster at certain times of day – e.g. whether you tend to write faster in the mornings or evenings – as this can help you identify your most productive hours.

Writing 1,000 Words in the Context of the Entire Writing Process

Seeing your word count rise is always encouraging, but purely focusing on how many words you’ve written won’t necessarily do much to improve the total time you take to write a short story or novel.

For instance, if you leap into drafting (just one writing phase of several different stages) as quickly as possible, you might miss out on the chance to develop your idea earlier, or to figure out the key plot elements of your story. You might finish that first draft in record time, only to end up scrapping huge chunks of it.

Here’s how the drafting stage fits into the whole of the writing process:

How long it takes to write 1,000 words will depend on how long you’ve spent on the prewriting phase: a huge step that involves coming up with and developing the concept for your story, thinking about your target audience, carrying out your research, and creating an outline of some kind.

If you rush the prewriting stage, you might well be writing fast … but if you don’t have a clue what the main conflict of your story is or how it’s all going to end, you may end up with a whole bunch of scenes that aren’t going anywhere.

How Long Does it Take to Type 1,000 Words?

It takes about 25 minutes to physically type 1,000 words. (That’s based on an average typing speed of around 40 words per minute. You may be faster or slower than the average person!)

If you’re hitting that speed when you’re writing, that’s a really fast pace! It probably means you’re working on something that you’ve already outlined in lots of detail, or that you’re producing stream-of-consciousness writing.

For most of us, what limits us isn’t our typing speed. It’s how quickly we can come up with ideas and convey them in words.

However, if your typing speed is fairly slow (say, under 20 words per minute) that may be holding you back from writing faster. You might want to check out your typing speed here and try out some typing speed games to help you improve your typing skills and increase your average writing speed a bit.

How Can You Get Faster at Writing?

There are lots of ways to improve your writing speed – but for most fiction writers, the key factor is how focused you are.

If you stop writing every few minutes to scroll on social media or reply to messages, you’re not only losing actual writing time, you’re having to spend extra time getting back into the flow of what you were working on. Improving your focus could make a massive difference.

You might want to:

Try Shorter Writing Sessions

It can help to have shorter writing sessions, at least initially.

You might manage 1,000 words in a truly focused hour-long session even though you normally spend three or four hours writing that much due to constant distractions.

Or if you normally write for an hour but don’t have much to show for it, go for a shorter session. If you set a timer for five or ten minutes, you might be surprised just how many words you can get down.

Develop Your Creative Process

It’s also a good idea to experiment with and develop your own ideal writing process, as there are quite a few factors within this which could affect your speed. That could mean:

• Thinking about when your most productive hours are, and scheduling your writing time during these. (How long does it take to write 1,000 words during your best hours vs your worst hours?)
• Developing a good system for doing research before you start writing your story, article, or essay.
• Outlining your whole piece so you can tackle one point at a time during the writing.
• Deciding whether you’d rather write fast during the first draft and edit later … or settle for a lower average speed if that means much less editing.
• Leaving out tricky scenes or ones you don’t want to write yet, and skipping forward to ones that interest you more.
• Experimenting with different writing tools. I used to write in MS Word, but now I find Google Docs works best for me, as it’s so quick to load up and I can easily access it from any device. I’ve also used software like Scrivener and DarkRoom.

Give some of these a try … and see what works for you.

Free Novel Structure Worksheet (For Easier, Faster Writing!)

For more help, grab my free novel structure worksheet.

It’ll help you figure out the key plot points of your novel … making the whole writing (or rewriting!) process feel a whole lot easier and faster.