Word Sprints

Now that the whirlwind of releasing Lockwood has started to release its hold on my brain (I still check my stats daily, but that’s just a bad habit!) I have started to focus on getting back to writing.

After reading Chris Fox’s books 5,000 Words Per Hour and Write To Market, I am trying a few of his techniques to great success. I downloaded his awesome app on my iPad for tracking my word sprints, and the results are encouraging.

Word sprints are a relatively new concept for me. I’ve seen them hash-tagged on Twitter, but I’ve only done a few during NaNoWriMo. Only yesterday did I decide to try a few word sprints for myself for real.

The result? I did five minute sprints, and ended up doing six of these. That means my actual writing time without breaks was a half hour. I managed to get down over 2,000 words in that time. I was thrilled!

Productivity is my new goal now that I’ve seen what I can do over a longer period of time. Speeding it up for my impatient mind will be great. I’ve outlined a few different projects, and a good chunk of the sequel to Lockwood Tower (it’s gonna be a beast compared to the first one). So, I won’t be twiddling my thumbs. Just slamming my fingers on the keyboard.

Maybe I’ll even be able to win at NaNo in November this year. Who knows?

If you are a writer and haven’t tried any of Chris’s techniques, give them a shot. The word sprint might just be the way to go.