If you’ve never heard of a writing sprint, let me first say, Welcome to the World of Writing Sprints!
(I’m imagining saying that like the guy in Futurama episode 1.)
Anyway, doing sprints is one of my number one techniques for producing content quickly.
Here’s how they work:
You set a timer, close Facebook, and write until the timer goes off. And if you want, you can measure the number of words you have at the beginning of the sprint and at the end.
That’s it.
It’s that simple.
You can even race with other people if you want. (Though, remember, writing more words doesn’t make you a better writer, more competent, or more qualified. I can write “banana” a thousand times in twenty minutes and totally hack the sprint and make it look like I’m the fastest writer, but that’s stupid and pointless and don’t be a banana.)
My personal preference is to set the timer between 15 - 30 minutes, and take a 5-minute break between sprints. These days, I tend to be closer to the 30 minute range. I find less than 15 min too short to really get into it, and longer than 30 is too long and my attention starts to wane. Other people like to set the timer for five minutes. Or an hour. Or two hours.
It’s really about what works best for you.
Back in the day (way back, think like 8 - 10 years), I had heard of sprints and thought they were stupid. “Why need a timer?” I asked myself. “What’s the difference between writing for twenty minutes with a timer and without?” and so it took me a while to try it.
But there’s definitely a difference. Something about having a defined beginning and end point works really well for my brain. I also find that sprinting with others helps. Something about the social pressure of not having produced any words at all during a sprint makes me want to get my brain into gear.
There are plenty of tools you can use to do the sprint. You can set a timer on your phone, download a desktop timer, use online sites—some people even have browser blocker extensions that make it so you can’t use the internet for that interim of time. What ever works for you.
Quick tip: If you’re writing by hand and sprinting with other people, the easiest way is to do a quick average—count how many words per line for maybe 10 lines, and then how many lines per page, and multiply.
So for example, if you have a sheet with 20 lines, the top ten lines might look like this: 7 words, 8 words, 11 words, 13 words, 15 words, 7 words, 10 words, 8 words, 9 words, 10 words. Add them up (98), divide by the number of lines (9.8 — you can round up to 10) and that gets your per line average = 10 words per line. Then, when you do your calculation at the end, just multiply the average but the number of lines. So if you have 20 lines on the page, it’s 10 x 20 which is 200 words per page.
I know sprints don’t work for everyone, but I’m a big fan. Lately, I’ve been working on my speed.
I use a bot in Discord as my timer (you can join my server if you want; I do monthly prunes, so lurkers get booted, though), and my top speed is 52 words per minute, which beat out my previous personal best of 48 words per minute.
That said, quantity isn’t the important part of sprinting.
The important part of sprinting is the focus.
It doesn’t matter if I write 50 words during a twenty minute sprint or 500 words or 1000 words. What matters is that I stayed attentive to my project for the entire sprint.
Sometimes, I can get into the zone for the entire sprint, and my wordcount is insane.
Sometimes, I need to go back and read some of what I wrote previously, before I can continue forward. Then my wordcount is lower, but it’s fine, because I was doing what I needed to do in order to move forward.
Sometimes, I need to go back and fix something, I delete a few sentences, and my wordcount actually goes down. But it’s fine, because I was doing what I needed to do in order to move forward.
Sometimes, I don’t even write during sprints. I often edit (and count pages) or do completely other things, like responding to emails or setting up ads or whatever it is I’m working on that particular day. And then I make up completely random numbers (for the Discord bot—it counts wordcount to measure sprints), but it doesn’t matter, because I’m doing what I need to do in order to move forward.
As we move into November, I’m going to be doing a lot of writing sprints because it’s National Novel Writing Month! I’ll be writing a whole book in Nov, so I’ll be needing that word count to succeed.
And if you’re interested, I invite you to join me!
A couple of last minute thoughts:
Sprints aren’t for everyone. If they stress you out, don’t do them!
You don’t have to share your real wordcount. Nobody cares. Make it up if you want. It’s the focus that matters.
Even though doing sprints with other people is structured as a competition, it really isn’t. It’s about focusing. It’s about getting words on the page. Or getting some work done. And if the sprint helped you move forward, you’ve succeeded.
In the end, it comes down to focus. And sprints help me focus. <3
As a side note, I’m putting together a weekly email of writing tips. If you’re interested in joining, click to sign up!