7 Ways to Write Really Fast: How I Wrote a Novel in a Month

1. Writing Sprints

   Set a timer and just write for 10 or 20 minutes straight. Turn your phone off, don’t get up and go pee, don’t feed the cat, don’t switch over the laundry, don’t get another coffee until that timer goes off. This usually gets me going and bet it will help you continue on once you get going.

2. Word Count Goals vs Time Based Goals

   You can do a word count goal and race the clock in a different kind of sprint. It might make you write faster and it kind of feels like a race to beat your time. I started at 1000 words an hour and I’m down to 1000 words in 40 minutes. These aren’t quality words, mind you, but they are words on a page.

3. Routine

   Write in the same place, at the same time, every day. We are creatures of routine and your mind knows what it’s supposed to do based on the stimuli around you. I know when I go to a certain booth at a certain restaurant mid afternoon (that I’ve been going to for the last 18 years) that my brain is supposed to be writing. I instinctively pull my notebook out half the time even if I just went for a coffee. Set yourself up at a special desk, light a candle with a specific scent, do something to cue you that its writing time.

4. Don’t Fuss

   Contrary to # 3 with having a routine, don’t be fussed if you don’t have the perfect environment with the perfect pen. Notebooks and laptops are portable. You can write at kids swimming lessons, at the riding barn, on your lunch break and even in the car waiting for pick up. You have to do what you have to do, and if you can sneak in a half hour somewhere that’s a couple pages. Try writing on your phone. Make sure everything is synced or just copy and paste when you get home.

5. Basic Outline

   You might have a plan or you might not. It helps to have a map. If you have to come up with an idea as you’re sitting there staring at the screen it wastes your writing time. Try priming your imagination but looking at your plan the night before if you write in the morning. Then you have a starting point and possibilities.

6. No Reading Back & No Editing

   This is where you will definitely get stuck. Your first draft is not perfect and you’re going to want to mess with it. So just don’t look. Keep going. If you decide to change your point of view or a character’s name, make a note and start writing going forward with the change. If you go correct it through every scene backwards and then you decide you actually want a different point of view, how much time did you just spend? Don’t look back.

7. No Other Projects

   I’m prone to shiny-object-syndrome. This project feels hard so maybe I should try another one. you have to commit to what you’re doing and force yourself through at at some point when it gets hard you’re going to look for another productive place to spend your time. Choose this one and just force yourself to finish it.

8. Writer Friends

   Go find them. They are the ones who will get you, genuinely care about your work, and keep you going. They can provide feedback, sprint with you or show you an inspiring poem. They might be in person in your local area or other students in a class, but there are a ton of writing groups online. Go right now and google it.

Bonus: A Writing Exercise

When you’re just stuck and you don’t want to do anything, commit to one page or ten minutes and just force yourself to write something. It might be “I don’t know what to write right now, I have nothing to say right now, I promised I would write and I don’t want to write and I’m whiny and annoyed especially by that pigeon cooing in the neighbours roof, I swear I need it to stop. I’m supposed to be writing right now about a character, I don’t even know her name I don’t want to write. I’m so tired. Wah was wah. I could use that, the pigeon cooing as an example of the most annoying noise to my character while she’s trying to do her homework. Alright, fine I’m going to write it. Cara was sitting in her room, trying to force her way through another algebra problem but she couldn’t focus on anything but the cooing outside her bedroom window. The neighbour had a pigeon nesting inside her room and since she was an old lady who couldn’t climb a ladder and didn’t have any friends she let the pigeon live in her roof. Cara had to do something about that pigeon.”

Now my brain remembers it’s supposed to be writing and making up stories so I can get words on the page. So will yours.