Writing Faster For the Win E-Book

L.A. Witt

• Herausgeber: GallagherWitt Publishing LLC
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Writing faster, for the win!

Frustrated with your writing output? Looking for ways to get the words moving?

L.A. Witt has written and published nearly 200 romance novels and novellas since 2008, and in Writing Faster For the Win, she shares some techniques for getting the words out of your head and onto the screen faster than before.

Whether it’s shaking off insecurities and self-doubt, streamlining the research process, or writing out of sequence, you may just find the advice you’ve been looking for.

Approx 22,000 words. 2nd Edition - lightly revised.

Leseprobe

Writing Faster For The Win

Second Edition

L.A. Witt

Contents

About Writing Faster For The Win

Introduction

I. Space & Time

This Space is Your Space

This Time is Your Time

Social Media

II. It’s All In Your Head

Silencing Your Insecurities

C’mon, Focus!

III. Tools, Techniques, & Tricks

Research

[Brackets] are your [Friends]

You Don’t Have to Go Alone

Two Heads Are (Sometimes) Better Than One

Cruise Control

Tracking Your Words

Outlining

Writing Out of Sequence

Bite-Sized Writing

Afterword

Recommended Reading & Authors

Also by L.A. Witt

Also by L.A. Witt

About the Author

Notes

Copyright Information

Writing Faster For the Win

Second Edition

Copyright © 2015, 2023 L.A. Witt

First edition published as Writing Faster FTW

Copyright © 2015 L.A. Witt

Cover Art by Lori Witt

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact L.A. Witt at [email protected]

No artificial intelligence was used in the making of this book or any of my books. This includes writing, co-writing, cover artwork, translation, and audiobook narration.

I do not consent to any Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarize, train from, or otherwise replicate any part of this creative work, via any means: print, graphic, sculpture, multimedia, audio, or other medium. This applies to all existing AI technology and any that comes into existence in the future.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-64230-203-5

Paperback ISBN: 979-8-39863-765-6

Created with Vellum

About Writing Faster For The Win

Frustrated with your writing output? Looking for ways to get the words moving?

L.A. Witt has written and published nearly 200 romance novels, novellas, and short stories since 2008, and in Writing Faster For The Win, she shares some techniques for getting the words out of your head and onto the screen faster than before.

Whether it’s shaking off insecurities and self-doubt, streamlining the research process, or writing out of sequence, you may just find the advice you’ve been looking for.

To every writer who’s ever given me wings.

Also, thank you to author Erica Cameron for beta reading this book.

Introduction

What this book is, and what this book isn’t.

If you’ve picked up this book, chances are you’re trying to find ways to increase your writing output. And since I’m the one writing this book, just who in the world do I think I am?

Basically, I’m a writer who writes fast. I’ve been writing full-time since the end of 2008. Every writer has their strengths and weaknesses, and if there’s one aspect of this craft that I know, it’s how to get words out of my skull and onto my screen at a steady clip. I started writing at speed during NaNoWriMo 2008, and pretty much haven't stopped. Since then, I’ve written or co-written close to 150 novels, around 45 novellas and 20 short stories.

My output is roughly 80,000 words a month, give or take 20-30K depending on what else is going on in my life, and I write between 750,000 and 1,000,000 words per year (not counting my co-writers’ contributions to our joint works – I only count what I’ve written).

As such, I get a lot of questions about it, mostly "How?"

So, I decided to write a short book with some tips for writing faster. There's also some general commentary on not driving yourself up a wall (and stalling out) with your story because in a lot of situations, the key to writing fast is knocking over some mental obstacles in your writing technique. i.e., spending less time banging your head against the keyboard and more time tapping your fingers on it.

For some, upping your speed is a matter of technique. For others, it’s a mindset—getting past insecurities and shaking off bad (if well-intentioned) advice. So, sections of this book will deal with both angles. Feel free to skip what doesn’t apply to you. Also, any time you run into advice, tips, or techniques that don’t work for you, feel free to skip those too.

I also want to preface this book by saying that writing fast does not equate to writing better. I can't write slow because I get frustrated and impatient. Other writers are solid and consistent at a few hundred words a day, and that's a comfortable pace for them. I say this because writers seem to fall into two camps—those who write fast, and those who write slow. There are always people who have something negative to say about one camp or the other. The slow writers are lazy. The fast writers don’t care about quality. The slow writers are pretentious. The fast writers just churn out garbage.

All of which, I believe, is nonsense. I’ve read garbage written by both fast and slow writers, and gold written by both fast and slow writers. Laziness certainly has no speed limit. Fast writers can burn out, but so can slow ones. Slow writers can produce very little, but fast writers can certainly be non-productive too. For that matter, a slow writer who produces 500 words a day will still write more than the fast writer who writes a novel in two weeks, but burns out and stops writing for a year.

The bottom line is that every writer has their comfortable pace, and there is no shame in writing fast or slow. This book is not a judgment of slow writers, nor is it praise of fast writers—it is simply a tool for those who would like to increase their productivity for whatever reason, based on things I’ve done and learned in my own career.

If you’re reading this book because you’ve been led to believe that writing slow makes you a bad writer, you’ve been led wrong. Slow is absolutely okay. Is there anything wrong with trying to up your productivity? Certainly not. Will increasing your speed hurt your quality? That’s up to you—personally, I believe that when you write your 5,000th word of the day, you still know how to write just as well as you did when you wrote your hundredth word of the day. But if you find that writing fast wears you down, and fatigue hinders your quality, then there is no shame in reining your quota back until you find the amount you can produce, with consistent quality, every time you sit down to write.

Side note: When we’re talking about word counts and quotas, it goes without saying that you’re still writing good words. Sure, it’s a first draft, and it’ll need editing. They all do. That’s okay. But don’t throw garbage on the page to fill your quota. More on that later.

Also, I’d like to make it clear before we get started that when I talk about my numbers (my quotas, hours spent writing each day, etc.), I’m using examples from my work to illustrate how I do things, but I don’t want you to get discouraged by those numbers if yours are different. Please keep in mind that I am a full-time writer. Early in my career, my writing sessions were eight hours or more, sometimes twelve or even sixteen. These days, it’s closer to five or six hours a day. That’s just writing—no admin, marketing, editing, etc., all of which take up their own blocks of time. Another writer’s sessions might be an hour or two. That’s going to have an impact on how many words happen during that time. We all have twenty-four hours in our day, but some of those hours are chewed up by other things, so each writer has to determine how much of the remaining time is available for writing. I don’t come home from a day job and spend an hour writing before I have to help kids with homework. So take my numbers for what they are—examples from my experience—and apply the principles to your own numbers.

With all of that in mind, let’s talk about what this book is not.

It will not magically turn you into a writing machine who can effortlessly knock out tens of thousands of words in a day. There are no incantations that will render you immune to burnout1. There will be no formulas for producing cookie-cutter books that need only a few details altered from one version to the next.

In this book, I will not be getting into artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT and other such apps, as I have not used them myself and have no intention of doing so.

As far as software goes, I tend to use Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel (I’ll get into how and why I use Excel later), but my methods do not require you to do the same. I know a lot of writers who use Scrivener, various open source programs, AlphaSmart devices, and even some who write longhand. You do not need to switch apps/methods in order to write more!

Essentially, this book is a collection of tips and techniques that I’ve applied over my career as an author. Some may be absolutely useless to you, while others may be exactly what you’re looking for. Some of this information has appeared, in part or in full, on my blogs. Some of it is entirely new. Altogether, I hope it provides you with some methods for increasing your discipline and productivity.

Furthermore, none of the techniques I offer must be followed to the letter. While I recommend trying them as they’re written, never ever be afraid to tailor something to your own needs. The purpose of this book—as with any writing book—is to give you information to help you on your writing journey, not create an army of writing clones who do everything exactly as I do. Though that would be kind of cool. I mean, imagine if I had a basement full of me-clones, writing just like I do. The coffee budget might get out of hand, though.

Anyway. Moving on…

I’m not going to tell you how to type faster. In fact, the idea is not so much to write faster, but to write more. To get the most out of every writing session.