It is getting down to crunch time.
Some people are freaking out:
There’s no way I’m going to finish!
I’m so tired! I can’t do this!
I’m nowhere near being done with the story!
How do I even finish this thing?
WTF EVEN HAPPENED TO THE MONTH I AM SO BEHIND!
Some people are languishing in their history already:
I can’t believe I already hit my 50K!
This is so cool! I finished early!
I met the goal already, and I’m almost done with the manuscript too!
My story is officially told!
It is so cool that I won Nanowrimo!
Some people are making good time:
I’m going to finish for sure!
I’m so close to being done! I can’t believe it!
What a wonderful experience. I can’t wait t get my winner’s goodies!
I can’t wait to cross that finish line!
50K is right around the corner – wow!
Whether you’ve hit your 50,000 words or are close to hitting it, or if you’re super far behind, the only reason you won’t want to take my advise today is if you’re completely done with your manuscript (congratulations). I’m going to make two words really big so that you can see them, breathe them in, and start preparing your brain for this process.
WORD SPRINTS
So, if you’ve been active on the Nanowrimo website and in the Nanowrimo community, you know what these are and what their purpose is in this challenge. A word sprint is pretty simple. It’s usually something short like 15 or 30 minutes (hard time with an alarm and all, official start and stops) in which you set a word count goal. Setting easy goals, of course, gets you absolutely nowhere, so you want it to be challenging. Also, you need to be realistic.
For example, if you’re someone who types 50 words per minute, you don’t want to set your 15 minute goal as 1,500 words because that’s double what you’re capable of doing. More commonly, though, is when a writer who can type 100-125 words per minute sets their 15 minute goal at 2,500 words. It is my personal recommendation that you don’t just use your words per minute skills as a guideline, either, because it sets you up for total failure.
When you’re timing you words per minute speed, you’re typing what you see on the screen or on a page. It’s not coming from the creative part of your minute that’s trying to weave a story out of letters you know out of thin air, much like your story is! Your manuscript won’t come out at a words per minute pace. Instead, you need to be realistic about your speed and abilities.
I’m going to use myself as an example, as I often do, and share about my experience doing word sprints. This worked really well for me, and it can be done on your own or with a friend. It takes absolutely NO adaptation skills between solo and group applications.
SOLO WORD SPRINT (My 2017 Experience)
I was on my own in 2017 and didn’t feel comfortable participating in online sprints. Sometimes there were places you could go and join groups of participating writers to do sprints with for a few hours. The idea was to hold each other accountable for getting the goal of each sprint block. I tried it a few times unofficially, using the 15-minute formula that was most commonly promoted in the forums. 500 words in 15 minutes. My brain was in the “words per minute” tunnel and I was like “33-35 words per minute is easy as pie.”
And yet I failed.
Every. single. time.
It was ridiculous!
I had nobody to hold me accountable and no rules to follow, so I decided to do things on my own terms. I tried a couple of 30 minute sprints on my own, deciding that it wasn’t a better fit for me than the 15 minute sprints, because I kept failing. It’s too short of a window for me to make an impact on the word count because of the way I work.
See, I need time to think about what I’m going to write. I need to take a couple of minutes to re-read what I’ve typed and scroll back to verify details I’ve written already. It’s just a part of how I put a story together. Knowing this about myself, I decided to keep giving word sprints a try by giving myself a bigger window to work in, and making my word counts realistic, almost easy, just to see if it actually helped me improve.
My goal for the day, I decided, was to really settle into this pattern and to just catch up on the 5,000 words I was behind. It was week two and I was behind the challenge goal and my personal goal. I had reasoned away the guilt and disdain I had for myself and agreed to do 5,000 words and just get caught up on the challenge goals. So, I set it up like this: 1 hour, 1,500 words.
Before I event started typing, I wrote this goal on a full piece of printer paper with two arrows. If I met my goal, I went left and reached for 2,000 words in the next hour. If I didn’t meet my goal, I went down to 1,000 words for the next hour. Sounds simple enough, right? I hope so because it was stupid simple. I had a plan for meeting my goal, and a backup plan if I wasn’t quite on par with my expectations. Either way, I should’ve only needed to to write for chunk of the day to get caught up. I felt awesome about my plan. I told my family I’d be in my office for six hours, and that I would be done “No Matter What” by dinner.
Well, I got started, and I just barely met my first goal. I was less than 50 words past it. Still, I met the goal an decided I could work harder and faster. Besides, I was already into the story now and I went ahead and chose to reach for 2,000 words. And that’s where the tables really turned for me.
I surpassed my 2,000 words goal by over a thousand words that next hour. It took me two hours of writing to be almost completely caught up. I only needed about 500 words to be back on track. Seeing that progress made me want to set goals to get back on track with MY word count goals. I flipped my goal tracking paper over and set out new goals. I had four hours to catch up on the equivalent of 10,000 words. I was already so close to that half-way point!
Ending this long story on a short note, I was able to make up 10,000 words in just six hours. I lost some steam during the fourth hour, but I was so far ahead from the second and third hour that I could afford that shift. This one day of catch up was INVIGORATING and proved to me that I could catch up no matter how far behind I was at any point. The value of word sprints in 2017 was bonkers – priceless! I was planning to use in 2018 before 2017 was even over! Which leads me to…
PARTNER WORD SPRINTS (My 2018 Experience)
When the 2018 Nanowrimo rolled around, I had talked a couple of my friends into doing it, one who lived in the area and was coming to my house 2-3 times a week to write in a focused area… and do word sprints!
Typically, we did this on our long days over the weekend, but we stuck with the hour long blocks because we had a similar process. Instead of falling behind, though, we were able to stay mostly on on schedule. When we did fall behind, it was never by too much. Towards the end of the month, we both were feeling like we had a long way to go, not necessarily because of the word counts, though. We both felt far away from our endings, so we made a goal of doing a 10,000 word day – like I had done the year before.
Was it madness? Probably? Was it unrealistic? Oh, definitely. Hanging out with your best friend with a goal in mind should be done with a grain of salt! Still, we both reached for the stars with that 10,000 goal plan at the forefront of our minds. In the end, we both had success in different ways. My friend didn’t get the word count, but was excited about what she wrote. I hit the word count, but my story took a total left turn and I felt super in the dark about where I was going to go from there. It was a totally new story, so I was really worried about the progress I would have after that.
In the end, we both surpassed the 50,000 word goal on the month, and we both agree that the word sprints were a massive part of that success. It wasn’t always easy and it wasn’t always a beautiful experience, but it was VALUABLE! It was HELPFUL!
It was NECESSARY!
Remember when I said you don’t need to change anything from doing word springs on your own and doing them in a group? Yeah, that’s still true. Each person sets their own goals – each person adjusts their goals as needed – and each person gets stuff done! You have slightly more accountability, but you also have more fun, so it evens out. There really is no change that you have to make! I’m serious!
Well, except maybe listening to your music with headphones.
But that’s neither here nor there.
SO IN REVIEW, HERE’S HOW TO USE WORD SPRINTS TO YOUR BENEFIT:
Pick the time period that works best for you: 15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, or 1 hour. Getting too much longer than an hour could risk feeling too much like a regular working block.
Set a goal! Be realistic, but not easy, and have a plan for if you meet your goal. A good rule of thumb is to go by 500s, but you could also go up in increments of 250 as well and accomplish the same thing.
Track what you’re doing on paper! Seeing a physical tracker of what you’re doing off of the screen can have a huge impact on how you are thinking about the project. Tracking it on something physical gives the idea a tangible medium. You have something that you can HOLD in your HANDS and reference and proof of your accomplishments on the day.
Repeat it for as long as you can manage. Do it as often as you can throughout the month (or last few days, in this case).
What do you think? You read to start sprinting?
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