“Worked all day. Germany invaded Poland today so I suppose we shall be at war tonight.”
- Enid Blyton in a diary 1939
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The Faster I Write, The Better The Book? from Roni Loren is about that supposed correlation between length of time taken to do a project and its quality. She wonders if there’s not all that much of a correlation at all. Instead, writing fast has a few advantages:
When you write that quickly under that intense of a deadline, you can’t stop and think or analyze.
So if you want to get the first draft down quickly, because you work better when you’ve got something to edit or rewrite, there may be a lot of merit to typing as quickly as you can. Are you overthinking your first draft? (That’s a Wordplay podcast from K.M. Weiland.) Remember what Neil Gaiman has to say about first drafts: they don’t really matter anyway.
H.E. Roulo explains how to outline a novel in 90 minutes
Rachel Aaron has a method she used to get from 2000 to 10000 words per day.
The Thesis Whisperer explains How To Write Faster, which involves rethinking your writing tools and letting go of perfectionism.
A Short Introduction To Speed Writing from Freelance Switch
As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one rule about a first draft and it’s this: “Get the damn thing done!”
Easy to say. Hard to do.
- from Go Into The Story
Hints on how to get up early from Zen Habits. It’s quite persuasive. I almost want to drag my sorry arse out of bed at five tomorrow. Apparently sleepy brains think more freely anyway.
There are apps out there to help keep you on task. One of those is ByWord (for Mac, so I haven’t tried it.)
How to write 1000 words a day and not go bat shit crazy (at least not within the first two weeks) from The Sociological Imagination
