Ways to speed up my writing to 15 - 20 pages a day

Question

I am currently at 5 - 10 pages (250 words/page) a day.

How to increase my speed to be able to write 15 - 20 a day?

Answer 1

Pick your problem from the list...

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Typing speed: If it helps, you can stare intensely at your keyboard while you type and edit later. If you can go at light speed while looking at the keys, do it. Then, later, you'll be able to look up from your typing. When I was twelve (three years ago), I could hit 70wpm if I was looking at my keyboard, and maybe 30wpm if I wasn't. So you know what I did when I was writing? I looked at my keyboard. Now, I don't need to, and I've kept most of that speed.

Ideas: Go looking for them. The Internet is a wonderful place. You can spend hours on TVTropes, Limyaael's Fantasy Rants, Springhole.net, whatever. They're great. And the time you spend will pay off: if you come up with good ideas and avoid bad ones because you read those sites, you might save days in the rewriting. I know this from experience.

Also, you should train yourself to think about your story whenever you're waiting in line for something or in the shower or otherwise not occupied. You might not think you're getting any ideas this way, but it does set your brain to working on the task.

Time: Two words: close Facebook.

...I said now! Do it! I don't care if some random Indian dude you've never met wants to be your friend!

Concentration: There's a device that induces this. It's called "earbuds." You can get them for about ten dollars at Walmart. I recommend the band "Explosions in the Sky," which is all instrumental and very calming, despite what their name would lead you to believe. Sometimes I have a hard time writing to classical music, though--it grabs my focus too much. If that happens with one band/composer, find a different one.

Also, there's a device called a husband, who should be taking care of your screaming kids so you can write. If he is uncooperative, bribe him with cake. If you lack such a device, build one. Tell your kids he's Data from Star Trek.

Or just turn on Star Trek. Your kids will shut up eventually.

Enthusiasm: You may be lacking ideas, or you may be beating a dead horse of a story. If so, ditch it and find something more interesting. Unless you're under contract, in which case, you have my sympathy.

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I'm a high school junior, and therefore have a lot of free time to write out long stuff like, say, this post. It's not unusual for me to work in 5000 words in a few hours, if I'm really into it or have a lot of time on my hands.

I don't write every day, and I don't always write that much when I do, but I do spend a lot of time on the Internet, reading things that were written about writing. I also read a lot of fiction. That means that when I do write, it's productive.

If I'm stalled on something, I will go back to the Internet for ideas--but I eventually write past it. You can't spend all your time taking in research, and you can't spend all your time writing, either. All intake and no output means nothing gets done, and all output without intake means you get burned out and are left with no ideas, and also that you're probably writing cliches. Balance is really important.

Answer 2

If you are a skilled writer, the goals you mention in your question may be not unrealistic. (1,2,3,4).

Some of the most usable advice I've seen appears in the writing blog of Rachel Aaron. A brief excerpt from the blog follows.

I ended up creating a metric, a triangle with three core requirements: Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm. Any one of these can noticeably boost your daily output, but all three together can turn you into a word machine. I never start writing these days unless I can hit all three.

The meaning and effect of Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm are given fairly clearly in the blog. I understand that more detail appears in Aaron's book 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love ($0.99 for the Kindle edition) but I haven't read it.

Answer 3

20 pages per day is 5000 words per day. That's a lot.

That said, here are some ways to increase your daily output:

• Write for more time every day.

• Write without editing or even critiquing. You can always critique later, and edit later if necessary. This might end up increasing the total time you spend critiquing and editing, which in turn might eat into your writing time. But you might be surprised at how well you write even without your inner critic's constant "help."

• "Word wars." Short bursts of full-speed typing. Type as fast as you can for ten minutes. These are called word wars because writers often use this as a gentle competition--who can write the most words in 10 minutes.

• If typing speed is the bottleneck, try a Mavis Beacon typing tutor. Maybe try a keyboard layout that supports faster typing (e.g. Dvorak or Colemak). Note that while you are learning your speed will drop, perhaps significantly.

Answer 4

I don't have the text in front of me so my numbers may not be completely accurate but I can at least give you a general sense of why the number of pages you write each day is a meaningless metric.

In Anne Lamott's book on writing, Bird by Bird she notes that the most prolific writers manage to write only one book about every 5-7 years. Regardless of how many pages they write each day, they're lucky if it all adds up to 1 page within the final product.

Bottom line - it doesn't matter how many pages you write each day. Every first draft is going to be bad. What matters is that you are able to sit down and write consistently and that you are able to go back and tear apart and ruthlessly edit and re-write what you've written, realizing that 15 pages in your first draft might end up being reduced to a single page, or removed completely.