Today we’re digging into the topic of writing faster as this episode goes live halfway through this year’s NaNoWriMo and you may be feeling the need for speed. Even if you’re not doing NaNo, there are plenty of times when writing in faster will come in handy for you. We will also talk about staying motivated in the long run and ways to establish internal and external motivators to help you tackle your writing project.

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Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 064: Writing Faster

Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. Welcome to episode 64 of the Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast. I’m Crystal Hunt.

Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani and we are here to help you save time, money, and energy as you level up your writing career.

If you find this show helpful, you can help us keep the episodes coming by clicking to the buy us a coffee button on the website and the show notes.

Crystal Hunt: Today we’re digging into the topic of writing faster. As this episode is going to go live halfway through NaNoWriMo, and you may be feeling the pinch and the need for speed.

But even if you’re not doing nano, there are plenty of times when writing faster will come in handy for you. But before we dig into all that Michele how are you doing and what’s new in Italy?

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele Amitrani: Something different from Vancouver actually it’s November and it’s still kind of warm, warm-ish. I was going running today with shorts and the sky was an Italian blue sky. I wasn’t ready for that and I just checked the temperature and it was half of that in Vancouver. So I feel kind of blessed to be here and being able to still run.

But that helps me because usually my running is immediately after my morning writing session. And one of the things that I am working right now is one of the biggest projects for my 2022, which is going back to the Italian language and going back to the science fiction genre. Now, as you know, Crystal and mentioned this in the past couple of episodes nothing was sure 100%, but now after one month and a half of constant brainstorming. I think I know a bit more of what I’m going to do with all of the pages that I have written up notes in the last month or so. And I think I’m positive, this is going to be a science fiction series and it’s going to be in Italian. So I’m going forward with the brainstorming still of this second science fiction series.

Because as you know, I already have one out which I call the Omnilogos series. I’m hoping to start writing some words by the first alpha of and hopefully I have a first draft ready of the first book by the beginning of 2022. And I’m not saying a month as you can see, this is a strategic choice, because the beginning of 2022 can be January, February, March, kind of whatever-is.

So I’m keeping it kind of on the broad side. So I’m also reading a lot of science fiction for this reason. To make sure that I give the right feeling to this project, which is still in an early phase for now. It is tending toward the soft space opera with reminiscence of bigger planetary scale, political intrigues, and I’m thinking of it as kind of the Expense meets the Foundation Series in a very non-threatening way.

So that’s just my project for now. And I’m sure I’m going to be able to tell you a bit more in the next few episodes. Mythological story number fiveā€”going, to the fantasy nowā€”will be my first mythological fantasy or historical fantasy if you prefer, which will be perma-free wide. By the time you are hearing this episode, this is supposed to be my introductory work to my first mythological series, which is now composed by four novellas.

And it will be interested to know how this permafree think go. We have been working on this project for quite a long time, Crystal, you know that, and we have been setting all the pieces. I feel like it’s a game of chess game. We been setting all the pieces together on the chess board and now this is it. This is everything that is going to happen now it’s going to be fun because all the grunt work has been done, all the foundation has been positioned and I just basically need to see if something is going to happen. Worst case scenario I wasted 10 days to write this novella and I spent around 100US to promote it, and nothing happened. Better case scenario a dozen people will be reading some others of my mythological fantasy. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but definitely this is a new thing and I’m very excited to see how this permafree fantasy will go.

Mythological wise on the Italian side I mentioned to you thatā€”in the previous episodeā€”that I was going to go exclusive with an exclusive Kobo release for mythological fantasy number four and Italian which apparently I called for several weeks, Scion of Gaia and then Crystal actually pointed out, you actually should say Scion of Gaia.

So now I got that correct. But that book in Italian was released as an exclusive to Kobo. And I promise to do that I was going to tell you how did it go. My answer is for me it went relatively well in the sense that if I see the number of people that downloaded the book on Kobo, it’s already the second, like best selling books on that platform.

Even though I just got a couple of dozen download, but those happened in the space of three to four days which is good for me. It’s something that did not happen before. So definitely was an interesting thing to see the book going up in the a couple of chart on the couple of stores and it was what kind of wallpaper on the fantasy section so a lot of people could see that book and from the reviews, it seems that people enjoyed it. It’s very difficult to know if those 20, 21 books that I sold in those two to three days will have a long tail, because that’s the first book of a trilogy and the second book is already out on pre-order.Ā 

I already saw people pre-ordering the second book on Kobo. Unfortunately I do not know how many pre-orders we have because I checked and Kobo does not allow at this moment to get you to see on the Kobo Writing Life dashboard, how many pre-orders you have?

You have to contact the person to ask how many pre-orders you have, but I didn’t have time so far. So I do not know how many pre-orders of the second book I got. And lastly I am dissectingā€”I think that’s the right termā€”a science fiction book in Italian to learn how to write in that language because apparently even though that’s my first language, it turns out that writing and reading primarily in English does not bode well with writing in Italian.

So what I’m doing now is basically going over, by word on a science fiction that I recently finished reading in English, and I’m re-reading it in Italian making notes of vocabulary, usage, sentence structure, and pacing. And if you do write and publish in a couple of languages, I will say this is probably the single most useful thing that I did for my bi-lingual writing in the past two years because reading a book in one language and immediately after re-reading the same book in your secondary target language does really wonders for your capabilities of really grasping things related to the story structures. So even syntax and more generally speaking how to convey feelings in a different language.

So I’ve been doing that as one of my side projects. I also know Crystal that you have been if possible, way more busy that have been in the past a few days. Do you want to tell us why?

Crystal Hunt: All kinds of exciting things have been happening. We have our Create with Co-authors book live and up for pre-order on both Amazon and Kobo, and we’re just hustling to finalize all the resources that go with it. So there’s a fillable workbook. thereā€™s a questionnaire, templates set of things that you can use when you’re kind of working on your own co-author business setup and all kinds of other resources in there to help you navigate through.

You know, finding, setting up, figuring out the details of any kind of co-authoring situation. So that is great. It’s with the final proofread editing stage at this point while we work on the resources. And so the next step is we get to do the final check-in upload and then launch that. So we’re super excited.

Definitely grab it at launch price if that is the thing you were interested in. And make sure you’ve pre-ordered if you’re waiting for a digital copy, if you’re looking for a print one, it’ll be ready on December 1st when the book goes live. So hold tight for that. And as we’ve been getting everything ready for that booklet, exciting news on the books to read universal book links front, which is they’ve done an update and now, in addition to the audio book links that you can add in your ebook links, you can also add print book links as well now. So we’ve been working through updating all of our titles universal book links to make sure that every format and all the stores and everything is all up to date.

So that’s a good thing to do for yourself as a bit of an audit. You may not be aware if you’re using the universal book links every now and then you should go in and rescan to make sure that all the stores are actually in there and then manually add in anything that the system didn’t pick up on its own. So that’s something that’s on my once a month list is actually to go in and rescan for stores just to make sure that everything is showing up.

So that’s not a bad thing to add to your rolling to do list. We also just completed the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. So I’ve been teaching a lot. We didā€”Eileen Cook and Iā€”did a master class on setting, which was a really deep dive into how setting intersects with other elements of story, plot and theme and tone and character development and all kinds of different things.

And so that was a really, really interesting session to prepare. And we’re actually writing a book on setting as one of the upcoming titles in our Creative Academy guides for writers series. It was an excellent opportunity to kind of street test a bunch of the information and see how people felt about it.

And that was really great. And in addition to the setting workshop, I also taught one on writing shorter romance and one on strategic indie publishing, and then sat on a couple of panels on reinventing yourself. That was one and one was on writing romance and kind of how the genre has changed and is changing.

So all of that was fantastic. While I was teaching, there were tons of other excellent workshops going on as well. So now I have about 50 hours of workshop recordings that I can access for the next month or so. So I’ll be diving into those in my designated learning time, over the next few weeks. So that was exciting and a very intense amount of interaction with people and stuff going on, which I am highly not used to.

So the last couple of days has been a little bit of recovery time and trying to kind of recalibrate after that much interaction to find my calm focused center again, so that I can dive back into things. I am going to sort of do nano and that I’m going to nano rebel it and use the energy of the crowd, the energy of the group to get a couple of things finished.

The one is Elfed, which I’ve been working on for a little bit now and that one I’m working through developmental edits and it’s going to go to the copy editor and a couple of weeks to get its final polish before it goes live in December. And I am then going to shift to writing either another novella or two shorter stories, depending on basically how long that next one turns out to be.

Sometimes the story knows how long it was to be and I don’t know until we get to that point. So we’ll see probably there’ll be both about 20,000 words or just a little bit less so that they are novellas that ended up in the Kindle short reads category. So you have to stick to under 20 K in order to make that possible.

Another exciting thing we’ve been working on is that my assistant, Kayla and I have been crashing through the represent book club, new website, which we have finally managed to move over all the extras from the old site and get everything live and interactive. So RiversEndBookClub.com is now live and ready for visitors, which is super exciting.

I learned a few new tricks in divvy, like overlapping rows together to get really cool sort of design effects and things like that. So I’ve been having a lot of fun with that super nerdy, I know, but that’s how I roll. And I have been learning a lot about website accessibility. So that’s another goal with this site is we are trying to make as accessible as possible so that people using screen readers or other technologies are able to get at all the information without it being a struggle. So we’re still working on some of the backend stuff to really make that be what we want it to be. But I’ve been learning a ton about how to build sites in a more accessible way, which is really an interesting thing.

And I highly recommend you dig into that a little bit as well. On the reading side, I have been reading The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. That is our next, just one thing discussion book for the Creative Academy. And of course this is always the time of year when I’m thinking about my own creative habits and you know what I want those habits to look like for the month of nano anyway, and often they get a little bit of a tweak for that.

And then we’ll see what happens following that. And finally the thing I’m like so incredibly excited about the supernatural app for the Oculus quest two just introduced boxing workouts. And I’m so excited. I can’t, I can’t even describe how excited I am by this. So I spent a good chunk of time yesterday, training on virtual reality boxing and having so much fun with that.

So I hurt, like you would not believe today. My whole body is sore and stuff, but that’s a good thing. It’s a whole new set of muscles and a new kind of way of using the Oculus Quest. So I’m really excited about that and would invite anyone else out there who happens to be using the virtual reality stuff to go and play with the boxing.

It is really, really fun. And of course it’s all in time to music and everything else. And you’re in these really cool locations. So I learned to box on the moon yesterday, which I thought was quite excellent. Okay. So enough about all of that. Let’s talk about our main purpose today, which is writing faster. Now, Michele, I am curious because I feel like you do a lot of your writing by hand, right? When you’re drafting. And so I’m really curious how that works when we think about writing faster.Ā 

External motivators can really make an author accountable

Michele Amitrani: Yeah, sure. Iā€¦ every writer I believe they have their own system. So some of the things I might say about my process, might sound weird.

As I listened to a lot of people, a lot of writers doing stuff that are weird to me. So, donā€™t worry if something that I’m going to say, it’s going to sound like completely nuts to you because it’s just one writer’s way to do their things. Crystal I’m sure it’s going to have a different process, but yeah, to answer your question, I do a lot of writingā€”especially when I’m doing the brainstorming way.ā€”Freehand. So just my pen. You canā€™t see it now, just Crystal can. But this is a Japanese pen uniball and it just helped me feel a bit more the flow of writing. And if you ask me what the flow of writing I just know that helps me keep writing for the allotted time that I designated for a day.

So I do this because it’s the very first thing that I do after waking up when I start my writing session. And I go this part of my writing, since we are talking about, you know, how the write faster, the warming. The moment I take my notepad and my pen and I start writing, I don’t consider that to be my writing, but the pre-writing and that just helps me get things going.

Ideas flowing. Think of it like a journal if you want, but instead of talking about myself or what happened to my life, I will talk about ideas that I have for the next book. And this is something that I’m experiencing with the next project, the science fiction that I was telling you about. That’s what I’m doing immediately after waking up these days is one hour setting the timer because that’s how I work, I set the timer for an hour and then just writing. I can’t do anything else. If not writing on that notebook. And I think that the question that you just asked me hit a very important point, which is a motivators.

Thinks that keeps writers writing. I think many people that are not in the business of writing have this image of the writer on a beach or on a very beautiful scenario in front of them and then just wait for the inspiration, the Muse to come. That’s not my experience, or it has been my experience very briefly for maybe 20, 25 seconds every one of two months. You can’t base a writing career out of that.

So for all the of the writer, they canā€™t rely on only the Muse motivators are I think the important factors that we should discuss about, or at least that’s how I work when I start to one of my writing session and I distinguish motivators with external motivators and internal motivators, we’re going to talk about that a bit more, but the very first one that I would like to get out there is the most basic one I think which is having a deadline to stick to.

And this could be in any possible form. You can think about. It could be, for example, an Amazon pre-order, you’ve got a pre-order in there or a Kobo pre-order. Any kind of pre-order in any stores that says, Michele Amitrani is going to have to publish by the 13th of March 2022 he first book of his new science fiction series.

That’s something that makes me accountable. And I know that many writers that I spoke with do this regularly. This is basically the way they create their calendar, their publication calendar. I spoke with a couple of urban fantasy writers that do this. I constantly hear from podcast other writers, which are professional indie writers that do this for a living.

They say this is the way they motivate themselves. Just one thing that I want to add to this is that I wouldn’t recommend this for people that are just starting their publishing journey. I don’t do this kind of a thing by myself. If I don’t at least have the first polished draft. So .ā€™ve never set the pre-order with no file attached, with no file attached.

I will always add something. But what I’m saying here is I really spoke with writers that we will nothing on pre-order so that they know they have the pressure to get something by that deadline. That’s why it’s not recommended for all the people. There are some people that really work well under stress.

Sometimes I can do that, but I can’t sustain a career out of that. I use other ways that we’re going to talk about, about external motivators, but before doing that, that would like to know Crystal, what do you think about this way of motivating yourself, and if you have some additional things that you want to say about this.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of motivators

Crystal Hunt: Well, I have done pre-orders where there is no book when I put up the pre-order because you can set up a pre-order like a year out and sometimes for setting up the links in the back of the books and if you’re writing a series you need those links in order to have people able to buy through to the next book and your series.

So I have definitely used that to kind of keep myself on track in the past. And I always hit those. I am good or I have been historically good with externally imposed, very like hard line in the sand kind of deadlines, but I’ve also found that over the last couple of years, my desire to do that has completely disappeared.

And so my desire to be working to crunch deadlines and the comfort level that I have with that is completely vanished. So I am really not doing that to myself anymore. I am, you know, still working with pre-orders, but I have spent this past year writing books I didn’t release yet in order to build up enough of a buffer that I am an entire year ahead of my publication schedule, basically, because I want to be writing to deadlines but I want them to be my deadlines and I don’t want the pressure and the stress that comes from having those, those hard deadlines be what’s pulling you forward. There’s a very funny, kind of a meme that talks about, you know, the creative process and the writing a novel, and then it’s like at the very, very end, there’s this tiny little section when it’s showing like a graph of the creative process and it’s like all the work while crying and I don’t want to do that.

So it’s very much yeah, just knowing yourself, knowing what does motivate you and, you know, knowing what is your kind of reason for doing this and how is that going to impact the rest of your life as well? So it is, yes okay we want to, we want to know how to write faster, but we want to know how to write faster without breaking the rest of our lives and without putting our bodies, minds and spirits, whatever into a place where we hustle for a short period of time, and then we crashed and burned spectacularly. Right? So it’s about finding that middle space. We’re always wanting to tweak things like, okay, can I do this a bit more efficiently? Where’s the 1% of change that’s going to get better results down the line without creating completely unrealistic to maintain situations and.

I think that’s the biggest thing to think about when you’re doing those pre-orders. Like, does it work for your own creative process? Do you find having that hard deadline, motivating or paralyzing? Where does that fall for you in terms of your emotional response to those external motivators? Some people are great with public accountability that used to work really well for me.

And now I am unwilling to make public commitments to things that I haven’t already completed, because it just, isnā€™t working the same way that it used to. And I think the amount of, kind of change that’s happening externally in the world that forces us to change what we’re doing atā€¦ thereā€™s only so many areas of life that at least for myself, that I can handle that in at one time and stay functioning properly and feeling kind of good in my life. So prioritizing which areas of your life get to have that level of stress. And I feel like at the moment, the world is still changing so quickly and we’re constantly dealing with, you know, different guidelines, different things we’re allowed to do.

If we get a chance at something, you know, that we were, the restrictions are lifted and we’re allowed to go do it, then fitting it in is important for our overall kind of mental and emotional health. So it’s balancing the desires to be living out in the world and to be hiding in our writing caves, doing our thing is definitely a bit more of a juggling act.

So yeah, knowing what external motivators work for you is really good. And you have a couple other things you do Michele in terms of externally motivating yourself to kind of pull you forward. what do you want to say about those?

Accountability partner and public stakes: Should you consider them?

Michele Amitrani: Yeah, there is the other thing that I use for my 12 by 20 challenge when I promise myself and my readers that I would write the 12 stories one each month in 2020ā€”and actually this helped me a lotā€”itā€™s an accountability partner. And in this case was Crystal which I asked her a couple of times to kick my ass if I didn’t give her a particular story by a particular set date. And there were a couple of months that I was afraid that wonā€™t have a story by the end of those 30 days, and this helped me a lot. It helped me a lot because I didn’t want to disappoint the other person and because I knew that Crystal could definitely kick my ass. And so I didn’t want that to happen. And I motivated myself and I remember those months as a quite an interesting experience. I remember an eight hours and a half of writing session, which have very found memory and at the same time, a very not found memory. And I’m saying not found memory because I don’t know the English word that describes that. This basically to let you know that you can definitely do this writing for accountability more than once, but at least for me, it’s not something that you can keep for a very long period of time. And Crystal just mentioned something that I think is very important. It’s worthy of repeating there are some things that we were used to do and where we were comfortable doing, we were willing to do in the past, which we are not willing to do anymore for different reasons.

And it might be because we wised up? It might be because we know better ways to do stuff, but I definitely think that writing faster it’s important, but it’s even more important to write for the long run. So we said on the podcast many times that this is a marathon and at least I like to repeat the phrase don’t bleed out.

And I do think that writing faster, it’s a noble and very worthwhile objective but at the same time, as Crystal was mentioning, you have to keep track of what’s important for you and what your body can take, because I can tell you after writing those 12 stories for a 2020, I was not in 2020 a professional writer in the sense that I wasn’t thinking of that as my job, but my mindset for sure was something like, I need to do this because if I don’t, I am a failure. That’s also something that can help you for a year if you know that there is the end and there is the horizon and it’s going to end up, but if you keep these as your default way of writing it might be dangerous in the long run. Again, I know that there are a lot of writers that can write faster than me, better than me, and I also know that they have 10 or 15 years more experienced than I do.Ā 

So always remember do not compare your beginning with somebody else, middle or end. So it comes with the label ā€˜bewareā€™, so this is another external motivators. Crystal was mentioning the other one general public accountability.

This was also something that I used for my 12 by 20 Challenge. I pledged publicly that I will give to a charity100 US dollars each month that I didn’t successfully publish a story to my newsletter subscribers. Now, I was definitely willing to do that, to spend the 100 US dollars. And definitely did help me to keep writing stuff.

But again, this is a pledge and it was important to me because I don’t want to disappoint people. And this is basically another way for me, as it was before with the accountability partner or accountability buddy, this is like the same but a hundred fold, or a thousand fold depends on the size of your audience.

So again, it is great if you are a particular kind of person, but it might not be the best idea if you are different. Itā€™s definitely helpful because it keeps your objective clear and, you know, okay, if I’m not going to publish this novella or this short story, this month, I will have this penalty.

You will have something that reminds you that there is a penalty coming, so that can motivate a lot of people. But again, there is a dark side of the moon, which is do you really necessarily want to do it? I will say that the accountability partner, it’s a better option if you want to keep it more of a low profile, but choose the accountability partner very well.Ā 

And the last thing that I use as an external motivator is to write down each day, the hours that I spent writing. And I know down to the minute how much I wrote since the beginning of 2020, again, thanks to the 12 by 20 Challenge. This is something that works for me because I’m a visual person.

And when I open my notebook here and you can’t see this but I’m going to show it to Crystal anyways, this is basically each day how much I wrote, and this is the month or two. Helps me if I see a whole, it means I didā€™t write and I don’t feel good about that. And it’s the same reason why I have a cork-board that with all the books that I’m planning to release and each time one book is released, there is a red circle that tick something inside me.

It’s like a check box. That’s done. Checked. Finished. I feel better. Iā€™ve got a kick off endorphin or dopamine, I don’t know the words, but something chemical that goes into my brain and makes me feel bette. Again, that’s an external motivator for me. Do you have anything else that I didn’t mention or that you can use to make yourself accountable for writing faster Crystal?

Flows and writing preps can level up your writing game

Crystal Hunt: I think just a quick note before we shift into some tips on speed specifically. I think that really for me, my focus has been on not being externally motivated. It’s been on being internally motivated. And I think thatā€¦ the finding the joy or the fun or the flow state is the way that Iā€™ve sort of internally motivate myself to write faster is just in having more fun doing it and being really engaged in the process itself.

So one of the keynotes at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference was a puppeteer and she was talking about how, when you get invited to come and be a puppeteer on Sesame Street, they call and ask you if you want to come play. And so that was something that I tried to adopt is basically inviting myself to come and play in the writing space in order to remove a little bit of the pressure.

I know a lot of people are finding at the moment that things that come with pressure become very overwhelming. So we had booked this episode, like months ago, we picked the topics for all of our episodes for this season and a lot has shifted since then. And so if you’re wondering, like why are we talking about motivation and all of these things in an episode that’s about writing faster?

It is because I think a lot of us are renegotiating our bargains with ourselves. And don’t worry, we’re going to give you those specific tips in a minute, if you are still looking for speed, but basically just acknowledging that that isnā€™t necessarily the primary requirement and the reason why we’re moving the pressure can be really helpful in terms of speed is that if you don’t feel like the stakes are so high, and if you do anything wrong, it’s going to jeopardize, you know your entire career, thatā€™s a lot of pressure to put on your self in the moment. And it’s hard to turn off your internal editor when you’re like writing away and you’re thinking, oh, these words are crap. They’re never going to get me the readers that I want to have or advance my career the way I want, or this book, isn’t going to get any good reviews.

You know, it’s easy to get caught in that cycle of doubting what you’re doing and that completely yanks you out of flow. So we did two episodes that I think are relevant if you haven’t listened to them before you should go check both of those out as well, which is episode 56 about getting into the flow of writing.

Because ultimately if you can get into the flow, then you are going to be able to write quicker because you’re going to stop paying attention to that internal editor. You’re going to find the zone and the word sort of poor out at that point when you find that flow state. The other episode is the one we did just before this, which is Preparing to Rock NaNoWriMo, which is also a lot actually about preparation and flow and getting into that state of knowing your story and being able to just pour everything out and that both of those are relevant for sure. But yes, in terms of being motivated it’s very much, for me, finding that flow state is entirely the goal and method of moving things forward more quickly.Ā 

A final note on internal motivators

Michele Amitrani: Yeah. And I will just say for internal motivators, something that really helps can be making sure to read feedbacks from readers. This is something that I’ve listened many writers talking about: the feedback from readers that actually told them that they enjoy their writing. This is our stories, and we need to meet to make sure that we are comfortable with them. And if other readers are sending emails or contacting us via social media and letting us know that there are stories made their day, this can definitely be something that we can use as internal motivators.

I know of other writers that have a ā€˜happy folderā€™ where they keep all the best emails. This is something that every writer needs and I think it’s something that we should be aware of when there are those dark days. And there are things that does not help us write faster, that makes us write slower or make us stop.

That’s why I think it’s important to keep in mind why motivation is important. It can be external or internal, but it’s important that we are set up for success. And I do think that this other trick, if you want, just remembering that other readers are liking our worlds, it’s important for our author career in general.

Now what’s something that is more actionable and that you can use or that you can at least try. Everything that we do, as we mentioned more time, it’s like, we’re presenting you with the toolbox and you can try this tool, if it doesn’t work, you toss it aside and try something else. But generally speaking, writing faster is an art, and I think it’s a skill in itself. Something that you need to develop. Me, myself, I do a couple of things that help me prepare my writing session one day in advance. I make sure, every night before going to bed, that I go through the notes that I’ve been writing on that day. This is incredibly important because sometimes, something happens while we’re sleeping and actually. I read a couple of articles about this. I do not know the science behind this but our mind can work wonders while we’re sleeping.

And it actually links ideas in a way that we can’t really explain and probably Crystal has a bit more of insight on that because she has the background to explain it, but I definitely found out that it’s true. If I read the notes that I’ve been taking the time to write that day, or maybe a scene that I’m preparing if I have some bullet points and I know that I have to hit some notes, writing just simply the act of writing the night before help me the next morning to write a better scene or with a better flow. It’s not something that always happens, but definitely it helped me write faster 95% of the time for again, a trick of the mind that I cannot explain, but I definitely am not the only one. I got this tip from many other writers that I heard that I’ve listened to ion podcasts, but also on writing conference, this is something that it seems many writers can use for writing faster the novel that they’re working. So, this is definitely the first thing: be prepared for day number two. So the second day after the writing of those notes and the other thing that I do is making sure on that day, when I need to sit down and to write that my able has absolutely nothing that distract me, if not my pen and my notebook if I know I’m going to free write or my laptop, there is nothing else if not the stand of my laptop and my water bottle. And also I make sure in order to write faster for that hours that I set a timer again, I’m a huge supporter of the timer thing.

I did not try the Pomodoro techniques which I think is like 25 minutes of doing something. in this case writing, and then five minutes of rest. I did not try that. I work better with the bigger chunk of time, like one hour. But definitely that helps me writing faster because I know I need to give my best shot in that 60 minutes and that’s something that, going back to the accountability thing, it does help me writing faster cause after that hour, I know that I’m going to have to do something else. For example, it can be translation admin job, but that hour is very precious to me. And that’s why helps me keep focused, thatā€™s why it helps me getting in the flow a bit better, but most importantly, it helps me writing faster.Ā 

And this can be one hour at the beginning of the morning, when I have most of my brain power, it might be 30 minutes or 15 minutes if it’s a very long writing day and I have to meet the deadline, but always there is a timer beside me.

It is something that I’ve been using in my 12 by 20 Challenge. And it’s now something that is embedded into the way I write stories. Do you have something that you want to share Crystal about tips on, general tips on writing faster that I did not mention, or that I never thought some other writer could do.

The need for speed: What does writing faster really mean?

Crystal Hunt: I do indeed. So, I think one of the key pieces is removing any excuse to shift your attention. So turning off notifications of all kinds, making sure that your phone, if you can, is, do not disturb and making sure that you know, if you are writing on your computer where you do all your other work, that all your other browser tabs are closed and there’s nothing open and in your face and that all of those desktop notifications have been shut down because there is a shocking amount of research on just how detrimental that is to your focus.

And if I had to guess, I would say about 75% of writing faster is focusing better. It’s actually getting into that flow state, staying there, being able to keep your brain on the project and task at hand without having it bounced all over. And so for me you need to find a keyboard and writing position that really works for you because your body distracting you is going to stop you from actually typing faster.

Whether you’re handwriting or if you are typing on a keyboard. You need to make sure your materials aren’t slowing you down. I know I have certain types of pens that I can write faster with those types of pens. And when I’m typing, I know that certain keyboards that I have, I can type way faster than others because of the positioning of the letters, I have really little hands and so some of the larger keyboards that have really tall keys, it’s like so much more work and I’m so much slower. So that’s something to be aware of that the ergonomics of your keyboard or the shape of it and the shape of your handsā€¦ I know some people, if they have really large hands, those tiny little like keyboards in a laptop or in a, an iPad, you know, the fold-up cases with the keyboard are really hard to use actually, because it’s not a good fit for your body.

And so thinking about that is actually going to make a huge difference to your speed, finding the material that’s going to be the fastest for you to work with. Also your actual typing speed is huge as your typing speed increases if you are writing on the computer, the ability to take something from your brain and have it come out your fingers and be in your story, youā€™ve got least the path of least resistance there is the key. And so you brain can focus on the story completely and not on the typing. So the more automated the typing process and the faster you get, the faster you are going to be able to write. You’re going to pull those ideas out and get them down on the page.

So, whether that means just practicing typing more write more and you will get better at it. Or you may find, you actually will benefit from taking a typing course. You know, there’s free ones online. You can go on and just practice typing without looking at the keys. And that is a really, really important skill to foster if you’re trying to increase your speed, I know it’s really basic, but it’s something that does absolutely contribute. And shutting off your internal editor is a really key piece to writing faster. You can’t be thinking about what you’re writing in the same way, and I am going to put a caveat here because for some people writing faster in their draft actually means they have to do way more revisions later, and it actually costs them time overall. So I’m going to put a big old bracketed statement in the middle here that says: ‘know your own writing self well enough to know that if it’s better for you to write slower because you get cleaner copy and you don’t have to do so much editing then do that!ā€™ Like there is zero pressure to actually increase speed if that’s going to sacrifice your quality and it’s going to mean you have to add time in later. This is just, if you are trying to blast through that first draft and you need to get it out and you’re feeling kind of stuck and you want to do that process quicker, then this is relevant. I do use a timer like Michele, I have this little hex timer and you can just roll it around to a different side, depending on how long you have to do it. Whether it’s five minutes or 30 minutes or 15 minutes, and you can just put it on the side that you want, and it will start counting down from there and it just kind of it’s subtly flashes.

So I usually set it for a lower time. I might set it only for 15 minutes, but because it doesn’t actually beep at me or anything, if I’m in the zone at the end of those 15 minutes, I just keep going until I noticed the timer again. And if I notice the timer, then I will, you know, take a sip of water or do a quick stretch, whatever, and then I’ll set the timer again for whatever periods seems reasonable, but the trick is setting those timers, whatever kind of time or you’re using for yourself for less time at the beginning then what you think you could do or what you need to do, because you need to build a success cycle into that experience for yourself.

And you want to be able to get to the end of the timer successfully and then you slowly up the amount of time on the timer. But it’s training yourself that you’ve got this basically you are setting up a successful history of doing a thing so that you convince your brain, your subconscious, your conscious, all of you that you can do this and that you are doing this and then it becomes part of your reality in a different way.Ā 

Pros and cons of dictation

Dictation is one of the things that it all, it often comes up in conversation. And for a lot of people, the learning curve is high, but once you figure out dictation, then you can write faster. I have never been able to do this yet. I think I would, I would love to, and I’m going to work on teaching myself this at some point, but I don’t have a lot of luck so far with dictating stories. The way that I think of things and see them verbalizing them just hasn’t worked for me at all.

Itā€™s just not a great fit with my own process, but I know lots of other people who have had great success with dictation and can get like 5,000 and 10,000 words in an hour. It’s wild. So if it’s something that you’re interested in pursuing, I would say book some time in and make it like a skills development thing that you do, you know, evenings or weekends or whatever, and practice on a story that’s not your current work in progress. If you are a, a working writer, it’s a good thing not to completely switch your process in the middle of a project, unless you need to, because you’ve had an injury or something, but switching mid-stream the results of dictation can sound like a completely different writer voice.

It is a completely different methodology, so just be aware that it may take a little training of you and a little bit of negotiating with your own process and your own voice to get it sounding like you. So some people will switch to dictation only at the start of a new series or for a certain genre, or whatever, just be aware that there are potentially stylistic differences there.

Also you can dictate a first draft and then you know, work all that out in the editing process as well. So there are lots of options there, but dictation can speed you up. And the last thing that I think is super interesting to try if you’re wanting to practice writing faster is to actually use one of the apps.

Like the most dangerous writing app is one where you type, and if you stop typing, it all disappeared. And the only way you get to save the work that you’ve done is if you can keep writing the entire time and that it also has a mode where you can hide what you’ve written from yourself, so that you cannot go back and edit, you can only go forward.

And if you’re having trouble kind of getting into the flow or getting rid of that internal editor, play around a bit with one of the apps that does that and just train yourself. It doesn’t have to be that you do that on your work in progress. I, for me, the idea of like losing all the work I had put in doesn’t feel super motivating for me.

It’s a bit like the stick. I’m more about the carrot than the stick myself. So if that is something that interests you great. If you think it’s an interesting concept, but don’t want to try it on your work in progress, then just try it free writing and see what it feels like and train your body to keep writing and keep going and not be looking back.

I’m a behavioral therapist by background, so you can teach yourself something in that context and then you can take the skills of the writing and the flow and whatever you’ve been practicing and switch it over. So maybe you spend five minutes at the start of each writing session, writing in the app to get you into the flow of writing consistently, without stopping.

And then you hop over to your work in progress. That’s a legit strategy. It doesn’t have to be that you’re risking your current relevant work-based word. You can use it like a writing warmup tool, just like we warm up when we’re gonna do virtual boxing, for example, we also need to warm up our writing muscles sometimes.

And that’s partly why writing more regularly every day or multiple times a day often gets people those extra effective results and keeps you writing faster because you’re in the zone, youā€™re in the mode, you don’t have to keep switching in and out in the same way. Okay, so, we threw a lot at you there. Thereā€™s a lot of different things you can try from those lists and we wish you all the speed in your writing whether it’s for NaNo or just for your own deadlines and desire to move things forward more quickly.

We hope you enjoyed today’s show. Remember to hit that subscribe button, wherever you’re listening to the podcast and to visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com for show notes and links to the books, resources, and tools we spoke about in today’s episode. Feel free to hit that buy us a coffee button. If you find the show helpful, every contribution helps us keep the shows coming and keep our productions ads free.

And until next time happy writing.Ā 

Michele Amitrani: Happy writing everyone.