I am worried that I will write so slow that my USB stored stories won't be compatible with newer computers. Heh... Took me around two years to write my first novel draft, but now I am lucky if I get a writing session in once a month. I want to write more now that I have time for it. How about you? Are you a slow writer? For fast writers out there, what are your tips and strategies for writing fast?
That's not so much being a slow writer as not having the time for it. When I'm able to sit down and write, and have a story idea firmly in mind with the problems worked out (mostly), I can veer between stumbling over my own fingers because I'm writing too fast to keep up, and having to think for a while (sometimes a few days or a week) to get through some problem before I can pick it back up again. My normal pace would be somewhere in between those extremes.
I think a strong strategy is to set a schedule and stick to it. It's worked well enough for me, at least. When I am in the zone on a novel, I commit to writing on about 90% of my days off from work. 4-hour sessions on average, and rarely ever more than 10 hours per week. I would say consistency is more important than overall speed. For my latest novel, I finished the first draft in 5 months. That might sound fast and seem like a ton of work, but it was mostly done by simply showing up. I journaled the process and recorded the numbers, so I know this worked out to an average of 35 hours per month and 600 words per hour. They say slow and steady wins the race.
A good way to get yourself started (if that's a problem)—when you have some free time open up your story and read over the last part you wrote. That'll either get your juices flowing to get back to work on it or to edit on what you've already written.
I find that listening to music helps, at least a little. It can be any kind though I personally recommend instrumentals as lyrics can be distracting.
This category is so broad—we have no idea what's preventing you from writing faster. The first step toward solving a problem is to define the problem as clearly as you can, by stages. Keep defining it more clearly, and often the solution presents itself, because your thinking was too broad and indefined previously. Just concentrating your attention directly and clearly on the problem is often all that's required. But I know of one thing a lot of people have done to give themselves more time for their projects is to go to bed shortly after getting home from work, maybe after eating a meal or whatever you need to do, and then get up early in the morning and use that time for your art. Usually the rest of the family is asleep and there are no distractions.
At what I think is a reasonable average speed of 400 creative wds/hour, it's 250 hours to knock out a first draft of 90,000 words. Maybe it would help to think of it as accumulating time on the project rather than words. If you have a one year target, that's about 21 hrs/month, or a bit over five hours/week to allocate.
Good points in this thread. I think I know partially what the issue is for me. Usually when I sit down and face the document, I get work done. Some would call what I have writer's block, but I do not see it that way. As soon as I open the document, I start writing. There just seems to be some forcefield keeping me from doing it at times. A busted start engine, I think. Thanks, all.
Yeah, I've found across the board with creative projects usually getting started each session is the hardest part. It's easy to get caught up in unproductive stuff like video games or scrolling YouTube endelssly or whatever. The best way I've found, as I said before, is to open up your project and look at it. Usually that'll get you engaged with it all over again. It also helps if you find your project exciting. If you don't you'll have a hard time finishing it or working on it at all.
You need to find the method that works for you. Personally, I break writing time into two categories thinking/planning and keyboard time. By doing this I have worked out many things before sitting down to put words on paper and make my keyboard time more productive. There are many nights I go over a scene in my mind as I am trying to fall asleep, and may wind up visualizing a scene several different ways in the process.
When I write, no. 5,000 words in a day is possible and has been done many a time. Getting opportunities to write? Now that's the challenge. I'm 25,000 words into a project I've worked on since September. I do a job requiring an average of 12 hours a day of work at present (more going ahead, due to the time of year). I then have to spend time with my family. It's rather like a senile monarch occasionally popping down to the nursery, saying hi to the kids, asking how the studies of Napoleon's greatest victories is going, then retreating back to the study and the workload. Against that background, writing opportunities are snatched rather than taken. A hundred words here and there is de rigour.
I'm not a slow writer... but i am a slow editor. I tend to "just write" when I have an idea.... the hard part (and more time consuming part) is rearranging scenes to fit a narrative. or trying to make decisions to flesh out characters or concepts. And I've grown frustrated with the amount of time its taking me to do it. So i just dont and let it sit for an extended amount of time.... and then its forgotten about. Only to be discovered when im randomly scrolling through old files to delete. I have A TON of stories like that. They are "complete" with a beginning, middle, and end.... but needs polishing. and i've just forgotten about them
That's me as well. I can spend minutes agonizing whether to replace "answered" with "replied." It's part of what I call the "polishing" phase. It usually comes to an end when I'm sick of the piece and and see no point in messing with it any more. I think it might have been Faulkner who was asked about his writing habits, and he replied (answered?) that he spent the entire morning deciding whether or not to delete a certain word, deleting it, and spent the entire afternoon deliberating on putting it back.
I am yes. I write short and flash stories only and rarely ever get the bulk of them in one setting. I obsess at each word, and that first sentence has to be perfect, my idea of perfect anyhow. It took me two years to write a nine page story. Granted, I gave up on it for months at a time, several times. The average flash fiction takes me a full week.
Sorry for the late reply. That must be agonizing. Do you suffer from not being able to write faster, or have you accepted it the way it is? For me, I have a bit of anxiety when I don't write as much as I want. It's like I feel I am not doing what I should be doing.
I don't suffer that much, but on occasion it gets me down. I have good moments of writing every now and again though. I don't really get anxiety like you do, that sounds awful. But, I have moments where I sorta chastise myself for not taking more opportunities to write. I get free time, and writing falls off the end of what I want to do. Even if I buckled down, I can't write if I'm not feeling it. Forcing myself seems to bring out the worst of my writing. I'm not the type that can sit still and write a novel. I've pretty much come to terms with that.
This morning I've been writing uncommonly slowly for me for these precise reasons. I've really got to get into a character's head. They're undergoing mental disturbance, and their obsessions have to be front and centre. Their thinking processes have to be absolutely crystal clear in hindsight and fuzzy to our everyday thinking at the same time. It has meant much slower writing than I'm used to. When I'm writing something in draft form, getting words down, I'll regularly write a couple of thousand words in an hour when on form. This morning has seen an hour and a half produce 414 painstaking words, each cultivated and pruned to produce an exact deliberate outcome, and I'm exhausted after writing them. Writing pace really doesn't matter. If anything, I'm guilty of rushing. 'I've written 3,000 words today!' Yeah, but are they good, worthwhile words? Have I produced something where a reader can pick a sentence up in their mind and turn it over and over, mentally masticating to their satisfaction? Probably not, if I'm honest, although the more I write at pace the more I become used to producing high-quality wordsmithing in greater quantities. That being said, isn't that better than endlessly chewing over exact word placement for hours on end and never achieving anything? The main thing is reaching a destination, no matter the time it takes. Progress is progress, no matter how fast or slow.
For some reason this sounds like Dr. Seuss to me— Pick up your story and take it in tow Progress is progress, no matter how slow!
@Dante Dases brings up a good point here. The voices of the characters influence word choice. The better we get into the character's head the easier it is to speak in that characters voice. Even the narrator has a voice when it comes to word choice. The better we can get into their heads, the less we have to struggle in the polishing phase. Part of the pace of getting words on the page is influenced by how well we can do this.
