Tag: Writing faster

It’s time I started to focus on increasing my daily word count average. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, something I’ve been writing about here, off and on, for more than a year. (That link goes to all the posts I tagged with the relevant tag. They started back in April 2014.)

Two things I’ll need to do to increase my daily word count average—

1. increase my writing speed
2. improve my ability to write for longer periods of time without tiring out or succumbing to boredom or distraction

Despite the popular notion that all it takes to write faster is to spend more time writing, those are two distinctly different things as far as I’m concerned. There’s writing more and there’s writing faster. Writing faster means increasing my speed, and my writing speed is how many words I write during a specific unit of time. Increasing the amount of time I spend writing doesn’t change my speed.

I’ve realized over the last few months that even though I say I’ve given up on the idea of writing faster in favor of writing more, that’s not exactly true. I do want to write faster, because there are just so many stories I want to write, and I want to have written them already! It’s unfortunate that I can’t go back in time and make that happen. ;) The next best thing is to get them written as fast as I can.

As for improving my ability to write for longer periods of time without tiring out or succumbing to boredom or distraction, I’m still working on it. Right now, with the success I’m having with the schedule, I’m definitely writing more on the days when I stick to it. So to accomplish item #2 on the list, I’ll just keep pushing myself to stick as close to my schedule as possible. Six hours of writing each day is enough. Anything over five hours of actual writing is going to make me happy.

That leaves me with trying to figure out how I can increase my writing speed. For the next few weeks at least, I’m going to be recording my efforts to do just that.

Write in super short sessions. Not short as in one hour, or thirty minutes, but really, really short. So short that there’s almost no chance your mind will wander, and every time your timer goes off, you’ve just been reminded of what you’re supposed to be doing.

Here’s why I’m giving this advice.

Three days ago, I started writing in 5 minute sessions.

I’ve written at a faster pace in the last three days than I’ve done since I started keeping track of that kind of thing in January 2013.

These 5 minute sessions have gotten me to 1,581 today on one story. I wrote almost all those words in eleven 5 minute sprints, although I did have one 15 minute session where I was just writing some stuff that I needed to get down before I stopped on that story—I had made it to 1,200 but wasn’t quite ready to stop. That’s 1,355 words an hour. My usual pace is 300–500 words an hour.

Last year, I spent a lot of time trying to reach 1,000 words an hour consistently. That didn’t work out. In case you’re thinking I’m losing time to the breaks between the sessions, I tracked the time and found that over 5 sessions, I spent 3 minutes in breaks, total.

This has made me really think about how easily distracted I am and how that’s been affecting my writing. I mean, I know it’s been affecting my writing, but I haven’t really had any way to see just how short a period I’m able to stay focused at a high level when I’m writing until this experiment started.

I don’t want to over think this, but I’m definitely having thoughts about it, and I’ll be keeping it up for as long as it works.

I haven’t yet reached 200 words in 5 minutes, but that’s what I’m aiming for.

For those not in the know, I write what I consider finished words. I don’t do rough drafting with the intent to fix stuff later. I make sure things are right before I move on from one sentence and paragraph to another. If I fix stuff later, it’s because there are mistakes that need fixed.

What that means is that I don’t allow spelling mistakes, typos, or other stuff to slide as I write. So 200 is a GREAT goal for me. And I’m just going to keep trying until I reach it. :D Someday I will.

Earlier today, I wrote 126 words in 5 minutes. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s on pace for 1500+ words per hour and that’s exceedingly good for me. EXCEEDINGLY. My average pace is more like 300 to 500 words an hour. In fact, I’ve never written 1500+ words in an hour before. Although it’s possible I’ve written 126 words in 5 minutes before, I certainly haven’t done it while timing myself.

What led me to this today was some journaling I was doing in Evernote where I revisited the typing speed versus writing speed debate I have with myself on a fairly regular basis. Don’t bother hacking into my Evernote account, because all you’ll find is a lot of rambling notes I’ve written myself and what amounts to a diary’s worth of angst over my writing woes. Seriously.

Selected excerpts from my notes to myself today:

Typing speed versus writing speed

I know I type faster than 50 wpm most of the time. I could even time myself to see what it comes to, as I write random stuff from my brain. I voice all these words, by the way, as I type them. I wonder how much that slows me down as I write?

Anyway, off to test my typing speed. I’m going to set a timer for 3 minutes and just type and then do the math.

I got 188 words in 3 minutes. That is a speed of 63 wpm. Not that great to be honest. I thought it would be more. I definitely need to start practicing my typing with some typing exercises.

So, my top speed possible in a hour would be about 3,760 words. If I did 50% of that, that’s 1,880 words. This might be “hard” but it is totally doable. Completely and totally doable, and I need to remember that. And 1,880 is 470 words in 15 minutes.

So why can’t I? There’s no reason. I can do it. I absolutely can do it.

While I’m waiting on my coffee to brew I’m going to try this again, slower, and see where I end up.

Okay, 122 words in 3 minutes this time. Much slower, and I deleted some stuff as I was writing just to get that in there. That felt more like real writing and yet it was still 2,440 wph. To turn that into my average speed, I can only be writing at 23% of my slow speed. That’s 15% of my top speed. Which makes no sense. I have to be letting my mind wander a ridiculous amount while I’m composing for that to be possible.

I think I can hit 2,440 words per hour. Probably not all the time, but I can definitely hit it some of the time.

Here’s the thing. I think I’m chasing the wrong ideal here. I don’t think putting all my effort into trying to make myself want to write for the sake of writing is the answer.

I enjoy competition, and competing with myself is just as good as competing with other people, possibly better, because I’m not comparing myself to anyone but myself.

Okay, I’m going to do some writing. What is my goal?

I’ve deleted lots, so really I should just write. I am going for 200 words in 5 minutes. If I keep typing and stop letting my mind wander, I should be able to do that. If I managed to type at top speed I could type over 300 words in 5 minutes. That would be AWESOME.

I’m going to give it a shot.

I wonder what I might gain from forcing myself to write really really fast and not worry about it being nonsensical. Would I get better at it as time went on? So that I could in a sense train myself to write super-fast and it make sense? This is something to think about.

I just wrote 126 words in 5 minutes. That’s the equivalent of 317 in 15 minutes. That is GOOD! If I kept that up for an hour, that would be 1512 wph.

Yeah. It was kind of boring. But it was also very interesting to me, because it wasn’t hard—although I admit it was hard to keep my focus on exactly what I was writing for even 5 minutes, but I did it.

I think it’s time to start working on a breakthrough in my writing speed.