*Please note the parentheses in the title. This isn’t a magical “Use this formula to write a book crazy fast!” post. It’s a “This is what worked for me, here are the stats to back it up,” post. Sweet? Sweet.
Okay. So, yes, I wrote the first draft of a 104,000-word novel in three weeks. Nineteen days, to be exact, if we’re counting the rest days. Seventeen days if we don’t count the rest days. (I take Sundays off as a writing-free day because usually I’m too busy with church and family things, and I find I’m more productive the rest of the week if I give my brain a break).
Here’s what that looks like as a word count graph:
(Before we go any further: speed isn’t everything. I draft fast because I’m a one-task-at-a-time person and it helps me create a more cohesive story. I also draft pretty clean if I do say so myself. That said, it’s not a contest, or least not between writers. It might be a personal contest; that’s up to you. All writing advice is subjective. All writing processes are individual. Moving on…)
And here you can see Book 5 in comparison to the previous four books in this (as-yet uncontracted/unpub’d) New Series, and in comparison to my two published novels (Voiceless Duology, NZ SF YA, pub. Atthis Arts 2017). That’s Voiceless in grey and Expression in black.
So I wrote Book 1 in New Series at about the same rate as both Voiceless and Expression, but because it was a longer book (105k as against 75k and 83k), it took longer to write (just over 9 weeks). Then you see the jump in speed for Book 2 (106k in just over 6 weeks) and again for Book 3 (108k in about 4 weeks). Book 4 was a bit faster than 3 but not by much; at the time (which was all of last month) I reckoned that was about as fast as I could go. And then Book 5, you can see another big jump to 104k in 3 weeks.
Guys, this is why I’ve stopped saying “it’ll never happen”. All things are possible. Seriously.
(Related: for both Books 3 and 5, I had a 10k-day. Book 3 went from 91k to 101k on Day 25. Book 5 went from 60k to 70k on Day 12. It’s a massive effort and as my process stands at the moment I couldn’t do it consistently, but it’s worth something to know that on a good day, I can do it. At all.
I still think hitting lower word counts but doing it consistently is better than putting the effort all into one huge leap, though.)
To put it another way, here’s my average-words-per-day graph, both inclusive of rest days (start-finish overall) and not inclusive (start-finish minus number of rest days):
As you can see, my average word counts have increased dramatically over the last six months or so. Here’s the part where I disappoint you and say sorry, there is no magic formula. It really is all about finding your own process. Find what works for you.
All I can do is tell you a few of the factors that are working for me:
(Background: I work two part-time day jobs for a total of 14 hours a week, so I have a lot of time to write. I consider the writing a third job but I know a lot of people don’t have that sort of time free. I also don’t have kids. On with the show…)
- I take a day off.
I honestly don’t think it’s an accident that my word counts increased hugely after NS 1.5. That’s when I started taking Sundays off and forcing my brain to have a rest. I need the down time to recharge (and it saves me feeling doubly guilty: church-guilty for writing snippets of WIP during the sermon and writing-guilty for being too busy to do much actual writing.)
- I get up early.
As a wise farmer once told my mother, “there’s always time in the morning.” I’ve been naturally waking up before six over the summer, so I start writing at six or six-thirty. That’s worth a thousand words before breakfast alone.
- I stay up late(r).
I keep writing later, I should say. I’m an earlybird, I can’t keep my eyes open much past nine. But most days I’ve got enough energy left for one more hour of writing after tea. If I’m done eating by six thirty, it’s only seven thirty when I finish writing. That’s enough time left to read a book or go for a walk or anything else I do with an evening.
- I focus.
Sorry, but it’s true. Personally I don’t use an app to cut off my internet; I prefer to rely on self-discipline and routine (or, y’know, obsession with my current scene). I write in one-hour blocks, and I hold myself to a 1k/hour output (it’s different for everyone. For what it’s worth, I was a 500wph writer for a long time). Once I hit that thousand words, usually somewhere between 0:50 and 1:05, I can have a break.
- I take a break (but not too long).
Until probably about NS 3, I would have an hour break for every hour I wrote. That’s long enough to eat breakfast or have a coffee or do some quick jobs around the house. But guess what? So is half an hour. Sure, writing is work. Creating stories and finding the right words and putting them down is hard. But a 2:1 work:break ratio isn’t that bad.
- I track my progress.
Use an app. Use a spreadsheet (borrow mine, it’s literally just a line graph in Numbers). Write it in a notebook or a new document. Track how many words you’re writing every hour, every day, every month, however your process works. Look back at last month and last year and marvel at how far you’ve come.
- I know my characters (and my story…ish).
Okay, so I don’t outline. But I generally know where my book starts, a few of the important events along the way, and where it ends before I start writing. And I’m on Book 5 of a 16-books-plus series, so I would hope I know my characters by now. It makes a huge difference. I don’t have to keep stopping to think ‘how would he react?’ or ‘would she really say that?’.
- I start the draft on a Monday if I can.
I wouldn’t say this makes a huge difference. But because I take Sundays off, it means that by starting on a Monday I get a good long run-in to the start of the book (which is when I write the slowest), and I can carry that momentum through to the rest of drafting process (and the momentum from that draft through to the next book, and the next, and so on).
- Just. Keep. Writing.
Ah, that great lesson of NaNoWriMo. How are books written? One word at a time, mate. There’s no such thing as writer’s block. Stick your butt in the chair (or on the floor in front of the sofa, which is where I’ve written my last… four? five? something like that… drafts) and get typing. This comes back to the focus thing, too. And the knowing-where-you’re-going thing.
- And the last thing…
God. He’s the author of life, after all. The ultimate wordsmith, you might say. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get preachy. I just think inspiration has to come from somewhere and, in my case, I think it comes from Him. Take that or leave it as you will.
So that’s it. I wrote a draft in three weeks, there are the stats to back it up, and there’s a whopping list of factors which helped me and which may or may not help you. I hope they’re useful on some level. Drop me a comment below and let me know.
Now I’m going to take a week off to read other people’s books and hopefully dream up some plot to fill the middle of the next book. Planning to start writing that one, life permitting, on Monday 26th February.
And sorry for all the parentheses in this post. They just sort of happened. 🙂
E.G. Wilson 
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