Writer[BUSTED] Q&A #2
Welcome to Writer[BUSTED] a ‘q’ and ‘a’ where I answer a question you may have never even thought of before about me as a writer, a world builder, and all the little things I do in between! I hope you’ll learn some cool, true, facts about me and maybe even discover some things about yourself a long the way! Let’s get to it!
A Real Question with a True Answers
One of the Feather Treasury Vaultkeepers *check your Newsletter!* asked a question last week that I couldn’t wait to answer! So let’s get started!
Question: How do you write so fast?
When you start out as a writer it often goes slow, it may take months or years to complete your first draft of a story and when you flip through it you may find you barely reached 40,000 words *a note for those not familiar with writer word counts, generally 50,000 words is considered a novel* and that’s just the FIRST draft, you will need to do it again…and again…and probably again to get it anywhere close to the idea you had in your mind.
So now that I just told you how impossibly long this passion seems to take…how to you make it faster? Well, faster may not always be best but when it comes to first drafts faster is better. As a writer once said “The first draft is just you shoveling sand to build a sandcastle with later” your first draft you telling yourself the story, it’s you getting your ideas onto paper so you can see them, it’s not going to be perfect in fact it’s going to be very messy. So the faster you can get through this stage the more time and energy you’ll be able to spend on the crafting that messy blob of sand into an award-winning sand castle.
I’ve had stories take me years that were very short and I’ve also had 100,000 word novels that took me a month. That’s only when I’m participating in a writing competition do I push myself that hard ;) My latest project I wrote 53,000 words in 18 days, a novel to get me unstuck from my last project.
So, fellow writers, if you remember nothing else then remember this it is absolutely possible to learn to write faster.
But, how? How do you do this?
Consistency.
That’s a writer’s very best friend, consistency. If you write 500 words a day, 6 days a week, for 5 weeks you will have fifteen thousand words at the end of the month. That’s only 500 words! And you can start even smaller. Just make sure you choose a goal that it’s going to be too far out of reach and that you try to hit it during all your writing days. Find a time that works best for you, maybe twenty minutes in the morning or thirty minutes at night, experiment at first with what works best but after that try to stick to that time!
Note* Every writer has a schedule that works best for them, for me I write 6 days a week and rest on the 7th, by the end of the week I’m barely reaching my goal and need to re-charge, but when I start my new week after a day of rest I’m surpassing my goal by a lot! So find what works best for you, but try your best to have at least one rest day.
2.Knowing what you want to write.
It’s easy to stare at a blank page for your only twenty minutes of writing time and get no writing done. So go into your writing time with a game plan, brainstorm your ideas, create a plot outline, write a random scene to get your creativity flowing. Do whatever works best to help you know what to write when you sit down.
3.Staying focused.
Yes, this will be the hardest one. Did someone just text you? Did the dog just bark at the door? Did you just discover the fact you need to mop your house? Is that a bug on your wall—
Staying focused can be so hard but it is also so important. Figure out when and where you’re focused, is it with music blaring? Is it alone in your chair with earplugs in? Find that place and then use it! Tune out distractions to help you write faster!
4.Enjoy what you write.
When you love a scene, chapter, or part that you’re writing you tend to write faster, more confident, you don’t notice all the red lines of miss-spelling, or the amount of times you used the word “sighed” you just WRITE. Try to find that, and know that if you’re enjoying the scene your readers will too.
5.Practice.
This is the last tip. Practice. Practice. Practice! The more you write the faster you will get, the more you get used to typing out 500 words every day the easier it will be to hit 1,000, then 2,000, then so on. The easier it will be to be happy that you got down that first draft, as terrible as you think it was. So practice. Ignore the urge to edit, it will slow you down and there is time for that later, ignore the glowing red line that tells you don’t know how to spell that word, you can fix it later.
Find your space. Know what you want to write. Set your timer…and go! Start smashing those keys and writing faster, get that story down, find a rhythm and works for you and stick with it!
How do I write so fast? A lot of consistent practice that anyone can achieve!
I have provided a PDF download of a simple writing schedule that you can print out and use to track your own writing goals!
Feel free to leave me questions below!
With Faith, Hope, Love, and Feathers,
Inertia.
