How to write… lekker fast.

How to write… lekker fast.

I am a plantser. 

No, that’s not a typo.  I combine planning or plotting (as some prefer to call it) with pantsing.  I compare my dual creative paradigm to an accountant, and a toddler.  The Accountant is the analytical-logical-sequencing-left-hemisphere of my brain who loves planning — in Excel, no less.  And the Toddler is the compassionate-intuitive-inclusive-creative-right-hemisphere, who’s a three year old brat, throwing wobblies whenever I spend more than ten minutes on my wonderful story structure spreadsheets.

According to the Cognitive Style Quiz, by Dr Loren D. Crane, I’m whole brained, with a slight lean to the left.  Which explains why I worked in Accounting for a few years, struggling, on a daily basis, to fathom why my colleagues didn’t seem annoyed by the constant flow of interruptions in the midst of balancing columns A to Y with Bank Statement Z (I’m looking at you Warehouse, Engineering, and Sales).  I loved creating spreadsheets, and crunching numbers— I just didn’t like answering the phone or emails or in-person questions while I worked.  It’s quite simple, really.  The moment my fingertips touch my keyboard, you do not exist.  Now go away.  Please.

But I digress. 

When I started writing, I thought I was a planner.  I enjoyed the process of planning up to a point, soon realising that the other side of my creative paradigm, the Toddler, found more than ten minutes of planning boring, and whined that I let it loose in Word.  The thing is, my creative-right-brain has this annoying habit of editing-as-I-go.  This is not a bad thing, since writers who edit as they write have a fairly polished manuscript by the time they complete their first draft.  My problem was that I was writing enough words to fill a page, but only had a paragraph to show for it at the end of the day.  I suppose one could call it over-editing-as-I-go.

If you’re a newbie to writing and/or have a tendency to edit-as-you-go, you may be concerned that your creative paradigm will sabotage your word count goal for Romance Novel Writing Month.  I found the solution to my editing glitch, last year, as I prepped for my first NaNoWriMo.  The answer came in the form of a writer’s guide titled 5,000 Words Per Hour written by Chris Fox as part of his Write Faster, Write Smarter Series.  His book introduced me to the concept of micro sprints.  What’s a micro sprint?  I’m glad you asked.

A micro sprint is a defined period of time where you write without interruption and without editing what you’ve written. 

That means no backspacing, no deleting, no stopping to check your research notes, dictionary, or thesaurus, and especially no social media interruptions.  Wait…what?  You heard me.  NOFacebook.  NO Twitter.  NO Google.  Unplug your wifi, and switch off your cellphone… unless, of course, you’re using the timer on your phone for your sprint.

Following the book’s advice, I turned off my wifi connection, put my research file in another room, and threatened my right pinkie finger with dire consequences should it stray toward the keys situated in the upper right hand corner of the keyboard.   I started with micro sprints of 5 minutes each, managing to fit in four to six sprints a day in my first week.  The following week I did four to six 10 minute sprints a day, and the week after that I increased my sprints to 15 minutes each.  In the fourth week, I was ready to tackle full sprints of 20 minutes each.  The advantage of starting with small sprints is that you’re training your brain like one would train a muscle.

It’s vitally important you track your progress by recording your word count after each sprint.  I created my own Excel spreadsheet for this, keeping it as simple as possible with columns for “Date”, “Sprint Number”, “Sprint Time” (ie. length of time), and “Sprint Word Count”.  (For those of you who have little to no experience in Excel, Chris has a link to a spreadsheet, he created, in his book.)I enjoyed competing against myself by setting the goal of improving on my previous word count.  I must admit, the number of days I was able to write equalled to the amount of days I was too busy to write, but I grew from as little as 380 words on my first day to 2,456 words six weeks later.

I can only imagine what it might have been had I been able to practise every day.  I highly recommend reading 5000 Words Per Hour.  I visited Chris Fox’s website recently.  He’s currently writing 7,000 words per hour, and he’s offering his book5,000 Words Per Hour for free if you subscribe to his non-fiction mailing list.

Check out Chris Fox’s website:  www.chrisfoxwrites.com for more info on his Write Faster, Write Smarter Series.  

Written by Tracy Wilson