Do you ever have the kind of writing day you wish you could have over and over again? The words flow. Your brain seems to be on fire. Everything works out magically. Those days are pure gold. However, they also seem to be elusive. I’ve found there are three distinct steps to prep your writing day for success.
- Knowledge. As Rachel Aaron pointed out in 2K to 10K it is head-slappingly obvious that knowing what you’re going to write before you start writing is a key to making glorious word count. If you’re a pantser, however, you may think this magic can’t work for you. I say nay. It can work for you even if you are the pantsiest panster that ever pants because all you have to do is sit back, relax, and let the story play through in your head while jotting a few notes. Nothing extensive as an actual dreaded outline, but a general idea of what is going to happen in this writing session and only this writing session. That way you’re never at a loss for where you should be, yet you also aren’t putting yourself in a situation where you’re bored with the book before it’s ever written.
- Sprints. While the seemingly natural length of a sprint might be 15 minutes, you can make a sprint as long or as short as you can comfortably stand. The point of a sprint is to outsprint your inner editor. If you want to prep your writing day for success, you should consider sprints of varying lengths until you find your sweet spot of word count versus finger blisters.
- Know when to give it a rest. Sprints are fantastic; however, there is a point at which you become punch drunk from your word count. You have to know when it is time to shut the computer aka your brain down and do something else. If you’re like my friend (and mentor) John Hartness, you go do something else like run a publishing company; though, you may aspire to something less like a binge on Netflix. I know I do.
How I use these steps to prep my writing day for success
As Rachel ascribes, I take five minutes at the beginning of my writing session and I jot down what I’m going to write about for that session. Now that session might take me all day because sometimes I get expansive, but those five minutes at the beginning help keep me on track.
My sprints are approximately 25 minutes long with a five minute break afterwards. This allows me to write about 800-1,000 words depending on how fast my fingers are flying that day.
Finally, I begin with the end in mind. I know how many sprints I’m going to run in a day and when my work day ends.
Three keys to success in prepping your writing day.