Robin does the word count thing, too

Holy cow! That's a massive amount! Tell us your secret! How do you combine writing so much with work/school? What is your writing ritual?

Um, yes?



Speaking more seriously, I'm not sure.  It's been a loooong haul that's gotten me to writing faster.  First of all, I should say that I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can write in my down time - and on a computer, which makes it enormously faster than having to type it up again later.  I do get a good chunk of writing done at work most days, because I work nights and a lot of my job is sitting around and waiting for an emergency to happen.  Until then, I'm at a lot of loose ends.

But the way I got to writing faster was actually through doing NaNo.  Last year, I started doing a self-word war that sped me up amazingly, and I've managed to speed up my writing bit by bit over the years.  The first couple of times I did NaNo, I struggled to get to the daily minimum, but last year it was like the world broke open and my writing increased exponentially.  Part of it is probably the fact that I finally figured out how to use a plot pointing method instead of trying to outline (which means I always know what comes next, even if I start moving things around), and I expect the rest is just the sheer persistence of getting used to writing every day and writing lots every day.

If anyone is interested, the self word war I use is this:  time yourself for 2 or 4 minutes of writing (I use 4 because I never hit my stride until I get going a bit).  Let's say you get 200 words.  Then you skip up to 8 minutes, so here are your goals:

8 minutes = 400 words
16 minutes = 800 words
32 minutes = 1600 words

You keep doing each time until you make your goal - if you don't make 800 words in 16 minutes, try again.  And then again until you get there.  You'd be amazed how quickly that adds up - next you know, you're punching out at least 1000 words in an hour, sometimes 2000 or more.  The real key is not letting yourself stop and think too much during the time period, which is generally my problem.  So, you have to know what you're going to write before you get into one of those longer time periods, but I find that short-term planning like that helps you really get moving when you need to.  

Sooner or later, some of that speed starts to rub off on you, and you find that you can write a lot faster even when you aren't NaNoing.  Even outside NaNo, I generally write 10-15k per week - I have to, when I'm posting 6k chapters twice a week!  That, of course, is my own fault.  I'm wordy and I type fast.

Um, right now I'm watching DS9 and trying to write Emma and Regina fighting with one another. It's supremely slow, but it gets me more words. Basically, I write all the freaking time, even when eating and hanging out with my other half.

OMG YOU LIKE DS9 TOO?! :-D *attack hugs*

I am not a Trekkie, but I do adore DS9. (I like Star Trek well enough, but most of it is too clean and too idealistic for me.) Unfortunately, right now "Q-less" is distracting the hell out of me. Because I do love Q, and watching Sisko hit him is always priceless.

Oh, yeah.  I've seen it all the way through once, and we're rewatching it.  I loved Voyager in high school but lost track of it in college (figures with going to a military school), and my mom had always watched TNG, so I was fairly familiar with it.  But DS9 continues to rock my world - there's so much to love about it, even in season 1 where they're still trying to figure things out.

Then again, my tastes in scifi/fantasy have always been for the complicated shows with flawed characters: Star Wars, Doctor Who, BSG, Firefly, etc...so it's not a surprise that I love DS9.