Do you have a hard time carving out time to write? I write 100,000 words a month (most months) by sticking to the routine I explain in this post. Try these tips for yourself, and not only will you boost your word count, but your writing may even improve as well!
Accidental Epic
When I wrote my first book, I had no idea what I was doing. All I had was an idea for a story and a very vague outline. I aimed to write 20 pages a day (double spaced), and after a few weeks, I had a full-length novel on my hands.
It wasn’t until I started comparing this to other books, I realized 100,000 words is a lot—most books longer than this are known as epics, and they’re called “epic” for a reason.
I even found that some literary agents won’t accept manuscripts that long because:
- They’re an epic amount of work.
- They’re expensive—like really expensive since many editors charge a per-word fee.
Books come in all different sizes. While Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was able to hold the attention of countless readers—despite its incredible 257,045 words—Lois Lowry’s The Giver was also an impactful novel at 60,000.
If your aim is to write a book, you should work toward producing the best book you can, at whatever length. During the editing process, the story will likely grow longer or shorter as cuts are made and new information is added.
You probably won’t write a novel every month, and you may not want to. Maybe you’re reading this for ideas on how to crank out more monthly blog posts, hit that 50,000-word NaNoWriMo goal, or for advice on how to finish your book this year.
The best advice I can offer is write as much as you can as often as you can. This is my #1 rule for hitting deadlines and becoming a better writer. It might be first thing in the morning, late afternoon, or the middle of the night. Whenever works for you, take that time to write and make it sacred.
A Draft a Month
By writing whenever I got a chance, I was able to draft two books in two months:
- The first draft of Manuscript #1 came out to 116,000 words in three weeks for a novel I (kind of) pre-outlined.
- The first draft of my Manuscript #2 was 93,000 words written in four weeks with almost no outline.
After I finished my first story, I did the math and found I devoted nearly 150 writing hours to that manuscript.
That’s ten hours a day spent writing, five days a week!
Unless writing is your full-time job, this will probably be impossible for you, but that’s okay! It doesn’t take ten hours a day to write a book. No one says you have to write a book in a month, anyway. This is just to guide you so you can reach your writing goals, whatever they are!
Some days you’ll write for hours, other days you’ll write for minutes, and some days you won’t write at all. But you’ll never finish your book if you don’t write anything.
Even when I reached my goal of writing 100,000 words in one month, my manuscript was not complete. Every finished draft has hours of edits and endless changes to go through after you’re done writing. The first draft is only the beginning, and it will take as long as you need it to. Use this post to motivate you and help you use your writing time effectively.
Remember:
- Every day was not successful; the writing was better some days than others.
- I wrote whenever I could, as often as I could, and I treated it like something that deserved to be a priority in my life.
- I just. Kept. Writing.
Set a Start Time and Make a Starting Routine
Routines keep you organized, reduce stress, and build habits. Getting in the habit of writing every day will help you become a better writer because practice makes perfect.
Find a place that’s easy for you to work and has space for you to keep a drink and notebook nearby.
Collect your music (here’s one of my playlists) and headphones. (Noise-canceling. Seriously, buy some.) I’ve used these from Amazon, and they worked great.
Grab a water bottle plus whatever you drink (coffee, tea, etc.), and take a bathroom trip before sitting down to write.
Hide your phone! Social media is a black hole that will consume all of your writing time. This time is sacred. If you usually use your phone as a thesaurus and/or dictionary, use red text for filler words you want to change later.
Set a timer every hour or so to stretch and refresh if you’ll be working for a long time.
Pretty soon, you’ll look forward to this pre-writing routine and it will become your favorite part of the day. Your creative brain will come to enjoy it too. Like a bedtime routine lets your brain know it’s time to sleep, having a pre-writing ritual can help train your brain to get those creative juices flowing when you want them to.
Write
Like I said before, writing 100,000 words a month is no easy task. In fact, most months it feels impossible. But if you make a habit of writing every day,even if it’s only for a few minutes, you’ll find yourself becoming a better, and faster, writer, and soon you’ll be impressed with how much writing you can get done in a session.
If you have trouble remembering to write every day, try scheduling it in a planner or set a reminder on your phone.
Just keep putting your fingers to the keys until you can’t anymore. Rest if you need to, but commit yourself to this time! Even if it’s bad, even if you hate it. You can make it better later. Write.
Figure Out an Ending Early
Trust me, this is the hardest part of completing a story. If you don’t have an end goal, your characters will just be floating from place to place without any direction, and your readers will be able to tell.
Make an Outline
For this outline, all you need is a crude idea of your plot.
How many chapters do you want? Your major introductions will be in the first chapter, major conclusions in the last, and the most exciting event goes smack-dab in the middle.
What’s your word count goal? (80,000 is a good minimum for most novels.)
Where do your characters need to go, what major events are in store for them, and how long will their journey be?
Answering these questions will greatly help you plan an outline and make a kind of to-do list for what needs to happen in each chapter. Fill in the gaps with inspiration along the way, and remember: if you surprise yourself with your story, you’ll surprise your readers too.
Keep a Story Notebook
Grab a notebook (or five) to devote to your story. Delegate one story per notebook, unless they’re really short. Use this to keep track of details, ideas, and questions you have for earlier or later in the plot. You can add or fix these later, but for now, just focus on moving from the beginning to the end of your story. If you really want to fix inconsistencies earlier in the plot, devote an entire writing session to that alone rather than doing it in the middle of writing.
Work in Sections
Before I write a new story, I make a rough outline and work out the basics of my character arcs. From there, I prefer to freewrite and make a chapter-by-chapter outline as I go, tightening the whole novel up with a thorough developmental edit at the end. Other writers thrive by outlining every detail up front, so they don’t have to “clean up” their story in the end. I think every writer, and every project, is unique, and you might not approach writing your book the same way someone else does. If you’re not sure what the best writing technique to get you inspired is, try out different outlines or a day of free writing until you find what works for you.
On my best days, I hit my goal of 20 pages a day. I knew where my characters began in each chapter and a general idea of where they would be in the next. The writing was all about getting them there, and making it interesting along the way. Keep your characters moving; move them through points A, B, C—or in this case, chapters 1, 2, 3…
Envision It
Picture your story like a movie in your head. What would really make this scene phenomenal? What details are crucial to painting the image you want your readers to see? The details you’re blurry about, let the readers be blurry about as well. The details you love? Make sure the readers love them too.
Follow your characters. If your characters tell you they want to go somewhere, follow them. Enjoy the story yourself as you’re writing it. Keep yourself in suspense, and definitely keep yourself interested. If you’re bored, it’s boring.
Question the rabbits. Follow your characters, yes, but don’t necessarily follow the rabbit trails. Some new, crazy ideas are truly great, but others will force you to alter your story so much for them to really work that it will end up totally off track.
If you have to force an idea, maybe that’s because it’s a great idea for another story. Write it down and keep it somewhere with your other great ideas for your future writing endeavors. The key to finishing a novel is staying on track. Remember your goal: beginning to end, A-Z, Intro Chapter to Conclusion Chapter.
When you’re finished with your first draft, it’s best to set it aside for a few weeks before doing any more work on it. Fresh eyes are crucial to spotting the plot holes and inconsistences you’ll be looking for in your first round of edits.
Your Turn
That’s it. If you think your writing is terrible, but still love your story, finish it! Keep going! That’s what editing is for! It is amazing how easy it is to answer the questions you had in the beginning once you’ve reached the end. Add to your story notebook every time you think of something and use free time to organize the ideas into the chapters/parts of the book where you think they would fit well. This will make it easier to avoid writer’s block when you get further into your story.
This post has been updated and edited by Catt Editing
Check her out at www.CattEditing.com or over on Facebook.
I. Love. YOU! This is the best blog I have found for writing so far. And trust me my pinterest board should prove ive spent enough time searching hahaha. This is a really inspiring post. Ive been working on a YA story for over a year and have shamefully only written about 17000 words so far. I will add i had a baby this last year and have been dealing with depression and anxiety since i started the damn thing… excuses excuses i know. Like i said i am so happy i found your site! Thank you and keep up the good work!
Oh p.s
Any tips for keeping at writing when dealing with a breastfed on demand baby?
Thanks for this post. Just dropped by here to check out this article after seeing it on pintrest. I think I’ll nose around a little more and see what other advice you offer. But yeah, there’s some great ideas in this post that I think I’ll actually implement. A lot of the time, I read articles like this and nod in agreement but forget it after about five minutes; but with this article, I’m going to write down some of your recommendations.
I work full time, but can attest to the fact that writing every day (even when you don’t want to) can pile up the word count pretty quickly. And I know that if I wait for the weekends to write – I’ll never make any true progress. So, in those three or four “free” hours after work I can either watch TV – something that is great for brainless unwinding but not good for much else – or I can write/edit my book(s). Even on those days where I am unable to prime the pump enough to write anything constructive, I do something that enhances my writing (work on the book’s marketing plan, read about writing, read books similar to mine, etc).