NaNo Prep, Day 5-Writing Fast
Okay, you’re set with characters, some scenes to write, a great mindset and the willingness to pad your word count as needed for NaNo (National Novel Writing Month). The next step is to train yourself to write fast.
Use a Timer
It’s November 1. You’re ready to begin writing. Set a timer for five minutes. Visualize your scene in your mind, the action that is going to happen next in your story. Can you see it? Start the timer and begin typing as fast as you can. Forget about misspellings or proper grammar, just type. Get as much written as you can before the timer goes off.
How much can you write in five minutes? If I’m writing dialogue, I can get up to 250 words done in five minutes. Straight action scenes or a character’s thoughts? Up to 400 words in five minutes. Everyone can find five minutes here and there during the day to write, so this is a great strategy to use for getting your daily words done.
Have a Write-Off
A write-off is a challenge to see who can write the most words in a specified time period. When you do a write-off with friends, you can really motivate yourself to crank out the words. You can hold write-offs with your friends in person, via instant messages, chat rooms, even on Twitter.
First agree on a time frame, say 20 minutes. Then each person starts their 20 minutes when they’re ready and tracks the time on their own. When the time is up, each person posts their word count for those 20 minutes. The highest word count, “wins” the write-off.
Keep Track of Your Progress
Tracking your daily progress can give you great motivation to keep pushing toward your daily goal. I use an Excel spreadsheet that was designed for NaNo to track my daily progress. I enter in my total word count each day and the number of minutes I spent writing. It then calculates my average number of words per hour, average per day, how many words I have left to finish, how many hours it will take me to reach 50,000 based on my speed and what day I can expect to be done. There is even a graph to visually show my progress.
If you don’t have Excel, keep track in a notebook or a document. Track your time spent and the words you’ve written. Seeing your words increase each day can be the push you need to keep going. If you’d like a copy of the Excel spreadsheet, you can get it here – 2008_nano_progress_chart.
Have writer friends who might enjoy this post? Send it to them with my compliments! And add me as a writing buddy at nanowrimo.org so I can follow your progress in November!
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2 comments
Rosy (2 comments.) on October 23, 2008 at 12:22 am
Why is it so important to keep track at how many words goes into a story, and is there a limited at how many words to use for a story or does it make any differences?
Cheryl on October 23, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Hi Rosy,
It’s important to track word count for NaNoWriMo, so you know when you hit the 50,000 words needed to “win”.
Outside of NaNo, word count is of some importance when submitting your manuscripts. Most genres have an accepted word count range. A manuscript that is too far below or above the range has a black mark against it to start. But when you’re first writing your story, I wouldn’t worry about the length. Just write the story and think about the length during the revision process.
I also track my word counts so I can gauge my productivity. If I know how many words I’m writing on a daily basis, I can better estimate how much time a particular project might take.