Friday, November 5, 2010

Word Sprints

I've been quite productive tonight. I did some self-monitored word sprints, timed writing sessions of thirty minutes with breaks in between.

First sprint I wrote 711 words.

Second sprint I wrote 817 words.

Third sprint I wrote 973 words.

A total of 2501 in about two hours, with a decent chuck of time spent feeding my internet addiction by allowing myself to update twitter and check for new blogs. Not bad.

Of course, this strange productivity decides to show up just before midnight on my second day off when I have work very early in the morning. Wonderful.

I've realized that writing sprints work quite well for me, but only when I'm really, really determined and really ready to sprint. It's like a mind state I need to motivate myself into. A thirty minute block of writing like crazy. If I can mentally prepare myself for it, then I can write great amounts. My fingers never pause. I don't stop to re-read and correct. It's a very good way to get words on the page, which after all is the main point of NaNoWriMo.

My current word count is at 7834, so I only need about 500 words by the end of today (the 5th) to be right on schedule. Some of y'all are doing great-- already decently past 10K words, and a few WriMo friends are in the 20-30-40K range. At least one or two insane people have already "won" NaNoWriMo with 50K words.

To which I say:

...


[Shocked silence. Also, some choice words I won't repeat because I try to keep my blog PG-13.]

For now, I'm going to take another break and spend some time with my boyfriend. I might do another word sprint tonight to push past 8K, but I'll probably wait until after work tomorrow evening.

Have you ever tried timed word sprints?
Do they work well for you?

4 comments:

  1. Good work, dude!

    I like word sprints too, but like you, I really have to be in the right frame of mind to do them.

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  2. I did actually do this the other day without realizing it.

    It was the only day I got anything written on my new wip. I also had some blog posts to write, blog posts to comment on, and a vomiting child to deal with. Sigh. It hasn't been a great writing week. And it started out with such promise. ;)

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  3. Awesome progress! I really have go try that.

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  4. Slow and steady is usually my preferred writing pace (which is one of the reasons I've never tackled NaNo), but I think sprints sound like a great idea. 2,500 words in two hours is pretty darn good in my book!

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