The Author Wheel Podcast
The Author Wheel Podcast
The Keys to Unleashing Your Writing Speed
During NaNoWriMo, speed is king (or queen) and the faster you write, the better you optimize your time. Which is why in today's quick "betweeniesode" we're sharing our best tips to pick up your writing pace.
Join award-winning fantasy author Megan Haskell and USA Today bestselling mystery thriller author Greta Boris as we unveil tried-and-true strategies to stay focused on your word count and keep your story on a roll.
Tip 1: Try writing in short bursts using the "Pomodoro" technique or writing sprints.
Tip 2: Don't be afraid of a little healthy competition! Whether you're competing with yourself or with other faster writers, you'll be sure to get more words on the page.
Want even more productivity tips? Check out our online course, Finish Your Novel Faster: https://www.authorwheel.com/finish-your-novel-faster
Get ready to accelerate your writing speed, stay motivated, and keep your story rolling!
Follow Us!
The Author Wheel:
Website: www.AuthorWheel.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorWheel
Greta Boris:
Website: www.GretaBoris.com
Facebook: @GretaBorisAuthor
Instagram: @GretaBoris
Megan Haskell:
Website: www.MeganHaskell.com
Facebook & Instagram: @MeganHaskellAuthor
TikTok: @AuthorMeganHaskell
If you're enjoying The Author Wheel Podcast, please consider supporting the show! You can buy us a coffee at the link below.
FREE Mini Email Course
Have you ever struggled to explain to others exactly what you write? Or wondered which of the many fiction ideas running through your brain you should tackle? If so, The Author Wheel’s new mini-course might be your solution.
7 Days to Clarity: Uncover Your Author Purpose will help you uncover your core writing motivations, avoid shiny-thing syndrome, and create clear marketing language.
Each daily email will lead you step by step in defining your author brand, crafting a mission statement, and distilling that statement into a pithy tagline. And, best of all, it’s free.
Hi everyone and welcome to the author wheel. This is Betweeny Soad number five. I'm award winning fantasy author Megan Haskell.
Speaker 2:And I am USA Today bestselling mystery thriller author Greta Boris. Together we are the author wheel.
Speaker 1:And today we are going to be talking about writing sprints Again. Like I said last week, the whole point of Nano-Rymo is to get those words on the page, and sometimes a little competition can help along the way, especially now that we are in the third week of November and maybe your motivation is starting to wane a little bit. Or maybe you find yourself behind schedule and you need to speed it up.
Speaker 2:Or all the turkey is making you sleepy and you need a little adrenaline, yes.
Speaker 1:So competition, healthy, friendly competition it'd be a great way to keep yourself rolling and going and moving forward and getting those words on the page. So our first tip today is to use what are called pomodoro. Now, this actually came out of the business world a couple of decades ago, I think, but the basic premise is that you break your day down into 25 minute increments, and each 25 minutes you set a timer. You focus on a single task for that 25 minute period of time and then, after 25 minutes, your timer rings. You pause, you take a break. You take a five minute break, get a drink of water or a cup of coffee or whatever. Then you come back to your desk, you choose your next task to focus on and you set another 25 minute timer and you do it again, and after four 25 minute intervals. Well, now it's lunchtime and so then you come back after lunch and then it's time to go home, and so there you go. That's the corporate version of the pomodoro. I think most writers use it a little bit more flexibly.
Speaker 1:we'll say that they don't necessarily do four in a row, with strict five minute breaks followed by lunch, but I do find that setting a timer can be a huge help for my writing speed. It's just, it's something about having that timer running and knowing that for just 25 minutes. It's just 25 minutes, it's not really that long, but I can focus on just writing that one thing, that one chapter, that one scene, whatever, and not have to or not allow myself to think about anything else, and so you can really try to isolate that chunk of time purely for writing.
Speaker 2:I recently tried, instead of 25 minutes, I recently tried 55 minute chunks because I was really behind and I need to write a lot, so I did 55 minutes and I liked that for really getting in the flow and getting in there. Sometimes 25 minutes is a little short for me for that to get my mind truly in the story. So know that. 25 minutes, yes, that is the way it was invented. However, feel free to be a little flexible with that time. Maybe it's 25 for you, maybe it's 45, maybe it's 55, like me.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's 15.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe it's 15. So, yeah, don't get religious about it.
Speaker 1:No, no, definitely experiment and find out what works for you and for your schedule, because sometimes you might not have a full hour so you can't do two. So maybe you have 45 minutes so you're just gonna do one 45 minute timer. But setting that timer does have a, I think, beneficial effect on the brain to help you increase your speed. But I do wanna say that for me and again, everybody's different, so you gotta experiment what works for you. But for me I have found that 25 to 30 minutes is the peak length of time for me to truly sprint right, so just typing as fast as I can. So the way I like to set myself up ideally and it doesn't always work this way, but ideally. We talked about brain dumps last week or two weeks ago.
Speaker 1:So if you can do a two minute brain dump, get yourself set up, get yourself in that zone, in that state where you're in that scene.
Speaker 1:You've made all those sensory details in your head already, you've envisioned where you are. Then start the timer for 20, usually sometimes 20, 25 minutes. I never do more than 25 if I'm really trying to sprint. Then I set that timer and I hit go and I literally try to type as fast as I possibly can when I do that for 25 minutes. If you really in the zone, you can maybe get 7, 800 words in 25 minutes, if you're really in it, which then you multiply that out across several sessions over the course of the day and all of a sudden you're writing easily a thousand words an hour, which I think is pretty good if you're not dictating. If you're dictating you can do even more than that. Experiment with that a little bit. But definitely block out that time and set that timer to be completely distraction-free, to be completely focused on just the one task of getting as many words on the page as possible in that amount of time.
Speaker 2:One more little thing I want to add to the Pomodoro tip is that if there really is something that is niggling at you I know last week we talked about not falling down the research rabbit pool, but there's sometimes like there is something you want to know because you feel like it's going to help you flesh out a scene. So I had that yesterday where I'm writing some scenes on Catalina Island and I wanted to know if there were underwater caves or caves that filled up with water, and I wanted to look on Google Earth. And I just wait till your five-minute break. It's good to get up and get away from the computer, but if there's really something you want to look at, then you can tell yourself. I can do it on my five-minute break. It was very cool to go to Google Earth and look at Catalina Island, look at the shoreline, look at there is a lot of caves. Then that got me even more excited when I sat down to write the next writing sprint.
Speaker 2:I was even more excited, even more jazzed, and I had even more ideas in my brain because I had just seen these visual images that were really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just want to add too that with that, if you five minutes, maybe that's not quite long enough. So to avoid going down that rabbit hole at least too far, give yourself a pomodoro for research.
Speaker 2:Ooh, I like that.
Speaker 1:Let yourself have 15, 20 minutes to focus on that research, that one topic, that thing that you need to keep your manuscript going. Maybe it's not quite a full pomodoro, maybe you shorten it a little bit so you're still spending more of your time writing than researching. But if you set a timer and if you follow that timer now, you're not going to be waking up two hours later going oh my gosh, my whole day just went away because I was researching Catalina or whatever. So you can set those pomodoro timers for other tasks besides just writing if you need to, if you find that that helps you.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's an excellent idea. So tip number two is kind of along the same lines. We were talking about healthy competition. You can take your word count from your Pomodoro. You can compete with yourself, and I do this quite a bit. It's interesting if you. I've noted that if I do 25 minute Pomodoro is my first one maybe between 450, 500 words. My second one will be usually over 500 words. I'm like competing with myself. But if I do too many Pomodoro's in a day then they start going way down. So it's interesting to see how your own brain works, like what's your peak? How long can you really do this at peak performance levels? So that's one way to use the Pomodoro word count.
Speaker 2:Another thing you can do is join a group. Nano-rymo does have groups built in. Usually they have them for your location. I know when they do the summer camp. You can join a cabin. You can grab other writer friends. You can start to go to a Facebook group. Whatever Then people will do writing sprints together, sometimes on Zoom, sometimes on Facebook Live, sometimes they just text each other starting now go, or sometimes even in person, like in a coffee shop. I was writing with a friend a couple of years ago. We would just go for a walk, get some exercise. Then we'd sit down and we'd do some Pomodoro's and compare word counts. She always beat me, though it was really discouraging, but you may find that you are very, very quick, and then that's a little shot in the arm and keeps you going.
Speaker 1:Well and surrounding yourself with people who are doing things a little bit better than you, a little bit faster. You're going to strive for that as well. I know, Greta, you've told the story before about running and how you used to run with people who were a little faster than you and, as a result, you got faster. So that's.
Speaker 2:No, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1:And that's really the goal. So, yeah, it might seem like well, okay, you're quote-unquote losing to your friend who writes faster than you, but if you're winning because you yourself will also be getting faster in that competition.
Speaker 2:Right. So that is our wrap on our writing sprints and writing faster. I did want to mention that we do have a whole online course called Finish your Novel Faster, and we have a lot of these kind of tips in there. So you might just want to drop on by authorwheelcom and take a look at that, but meanwhile keep writing and keep those stories rolling.
+.jpg)
