Whether for a challenge or a personal deadline, writing more and writing quickly can be greatly beneficial. While you will obviously make more progress with your writing by working faster and writing more, you also might feel more inspired by dedicating extra time and attention to your current project and also find that by organising your time, you have more of it than you thought you did.
Completing a piece of writing can feel like a great accomplishment, but sometimes we need a little bit of help figuring out how we can produce enough words to do that. So, here are 5 ways to write more:
1. Create a Plan
When it comes to writing, drafting up a plan before you get going can be a great way to prepare yourself for a new or existing project. Having some idea of the direction you want to go in before you start writing will not only help keep you disciplined if you run out of steam but also might lead to you identifying issues with your characters or plotlines before you even get started. The plan does not have to be set in stone, but it functions as a welcome safety net that will stave off writer’s block in most cases.
However, it is worth noting that in the writing world, you might be a ‘pantser’ and not a ‘planner’. A ‘pantser’ is a reference to the phrase ‘by the seat of your pants’, and refers to writers who prefer to get straight into writing without any planning work like outlines or character profiles done beforehand. If you prefer to go in without a plan, there’s no pressure at all to make one. This is just a suggestion that might help you avoid relying solely on motivation when writing.
2. Schedule Your Writing
Without a means of managing your time that you can execute, it’s difficult to achieve a goal. Motivation can only get you so far. It’s being disciplined that will lead to you writing more. If writing is not a consistent habit for you, scheduling writing time into your day can help you keep coming back to the page and ensure you get words written. Even if this is not every day, you should keep the times and days you write consistent so that you can form a habit.
Don’t set out to write every morning before work or school if you know you can hardly ever wake up ten minutes before you have to leave. Be realistic. If you spend time on your phone or doing a different hobby, consider swapping out this time for writing. Or you can try habit stacking, which is the practice of pairing a new habit with an old one. For example, you might decide to write after you make your morning coffee, or sit down at your desk and write after you open your curtains, or write after you wash the dinner dishes. Whatever it may be, tagging your new writing habit to an old one will help you incorporate it into your established routine and stick to it.
3. Don’t Self-Edit
When drafting, do not look back if there is no reason to. If you really have to look over what you’ve already written to get your bearings and remind yourself where you are in your story at the beginning of a writing session, work hard to turn off your inner critic. At this point in the process, being critical of your work is mostly unnecessary. A first draft is an initial sketch. You only want to know where you might or could go so you can work out where you should go. Your subsequent drafts will be the place to find every fault with your work and amend them. All that your first draft needs to do is exist.
Setting aside your critical eye will keep your speed and motivation up as you will not be bogged down by the details or by second-guessing your talent and therefore you will be able to write more. The desire for perfection can make writing a slower task, when your initial aim should be to purge the story inside you, writing quickly with the knowledge you can make everything look intentional and polished later.
4. Avoid Distractions
Even if you think you can concentrate for a long period of time, the chances are you cannot, especially if you are not used to writing a lot. If you know you are easily distracted, then you might have to work a little harder to make sure you can focus. A great way to do this is to write in short sprints, taking breaks in between. If you have 30 minutes to write, you can write for 10 minutes straight, then take a 2-minute break, write for another 10 minutes, take a 3-minute break, and then complete your half an hour with a final 5-minute writing sprint.
You can break up your time however you like, but this kind of approach will only work if you are entirely honest with yourself and committed to each interval. Only write when it’s time to write and only take a break when it’s time to take a break. Starting with short intervals is also a great way to build up your concentration over time and make your writing intervals longer, but you still need to ensure you eliminate distractions while you are writing. Try turning off your WiFi, timing yourself, listening to music or ensuring you’re alone (if possible) when writing to create a positive environment for staying focused.
5. Hold Yourself Accountable
It’s very easy to let yourself down. Letting other people down is usually a lot more difficult and we can benefit from learning to treat ourselves with as much respect as we treat others. If you feel guilty when you don’t write, avoid that feeling by trying to write for at least 10-20 minutes a day. Make sure you are always making some kind of progress towards your goal to keep yourself motivated, but don’t be too strict if you miss a day or two.
Feeling like you’ve failed already can lead to consistently avoiding the task you want to complete, so remind yourself that missing a day or a week is not a failure. You can always pick it up again and you can always write more. Be strict with yourself, but not too strict. The most important thing is to be clear with whatever goals you have so you have something to work towards and go from there.
When it comes to writing more, those are the 5 tips that always help me. Years ago, I was hardly able to write a blog post without being worried I would never finish it. The structure that these tips suggest, however, has been a game changer for my writing, fiction and otherwise. When I put my mind to it, I can produce far more words than I ever could a lot less self-consciously than before and with a little bit of hard work, reach the goals I set for myself.
Do you have any tips for writing more?
Read 'N Riot 
The best writing advice I’ve ever gotten was from Morgan Rhodes (who wrote the best-selling YA fantasy series Falling Kingdoms). She was on a panel with 2 other authors and someone asked about writing routines and she said (paraphrasing here): “I’m gonna say something that will sound very antithetical to the advice most writers get and give: I actually don’t have a routine and the reason is that when you get in the habit of *needing* routines and habits to write, you then are no longer able to write when any aspect of those routines and habits are thrown off and it becomes easy to make excuses not to write. Instead, I write whenever and wherever I have the time and space and energy. I write for an hour in my office when I get the opportunity. I write for five minutes at the bus stop or in the car pool line when I have the mental space to do so. I write for two hours while watching my kids play at the park. I’m able to write anywhere and everywhere and whenever the universe affords me the time, space, and energy to. And because of this, I get a lot more done, even if it’s in tinier spurts.” I feel like as someone with ADHD and a heart condition that causes chronic fatigue and chronic pain, her advice *really* resonated with me! It’s very hard for me to have a routine for various reasons, but when you love something—whether it’s writing or art or music or math or science or whatever—you find ways to make time for it as best you can. That might mean your writing goals are smaller or more unconventionally stacked, but as long as you’re making progress, that’s a good thing!
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Thank you so so much for this comment! I have another post about how I wrote 50,000 words in a month for Nanowrimo and I put a similar piece of advice in there about writing whenever you have snatches of time, as they do add up and sometimes you can’t predict why your day is going to look like. I should have included that in this one but maybe a follow up post will suffice. Thanks again for the reminder and thank you for sharing!😊
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