[Grammar] simple past continuous combined with “for”

[davidtrinh]

I am going to make up three sentences below.
(1) Three weeks ago, I was writing a short essay for five days.
(2) John was scoring a lot of goals for many years.
(3) During Tim's one-week stay in my home, I was working on my project for five days.
I am using the past continuous tense because the action mentioned in each sentence happened over a period of time. Does this tense work in my examples? Thanks a lot.

 

[Raymott]

To me, they don't sound natural.
1. "Three weeks ago, I wrote an essay that took me five days." Even this has a logic problem, in that if you took five days, it can't all have happened three weeks ago.
2. "John scored a lot of goals over many years."
3. This one's possible. But the following is more natural: ""During Tim's week-long stay at my house, I spent five days working on my project."