I’ll preface this by saying, I sometimes think what people should ask is: Why do you write so fast?
The answer to that is a pretty simple one: they don’t pay romance authors all that much. I’m 100% certain this is true in other genres, but romance gets comparatively low advances in comparison to other corners of publishing - especially category and mass market romance (if you can even come by a mass market contract in this current moment). I don’t know that I’d write THIS much if it wasn’t what I needed to write to support my family. Being self employed comes with high taxes and private pay health insurance and children are expensive - even if none of your children are disabled, but one of mine is and there is extra cost associated with that.
Why am I telling you this first? Because that’s my motivation. And it’s a very strong one. If I had a different set of circumstances I think I would still write fast, just maybe not this fast. I would still put out a lot of books - but maybe not this many.
One of the keys to meeting your goals is understanding what your why is, and I have a pretty concrete why. All that to say if you don’t need to write this fast: don’t. But I do think there’s a possibility that if you want to you could write faster than you do.
Writing, in my opinion, is like anything. If you work at it, you build up the necessary strength and stamina to do it more, for longer, and maybe even faster (or more efficiently, if not strictly faster).
My first tip for writing faster is to write. I’m a huge proponent of the idea that you learn best by actually doing what you’re trying to learn to do. Craft books and workshops and posts like mine can be helpful (I hope!) but eventually you have to try to apply those things to your own work - and I advocate for sooner rather than later.
You don’t have to be fast right away. You don’t have to be good right away. But if you keep doing it, things will come to you faster and you will get better. Writing is a talent in part. It’s also a skill. And any skill can be improved if you work at it.
My second tip is: turn off the internet.
I know.
But seriously, turn off the internet. It doesn’t need you. It has millions of people keeping it company, it’ll be fine.
I struggle with this one - not social media so much. I weaned myself off of twitter years ago and have never regretted it - that was the one that really had the power to steal hours of my time, whereas instagram, Facebook or TikTok only get me for as long as it takes me to write a post and close the window. But when I tell you I’d rather be texting my friends than doing just about anything else, I mean it. And also: I am a chronic email checker. All day. Every day. I like my inbox to be at zero. I’m an inbox managing king.
But those things do not get books written. How sad for me. And you. And everyone.
This is easier said than done and I get it. First of all, all of our brains are wired differently and second of all, all of our brains are rewired from using the internet the way modern humans do. We’re in search of instant feedback and dopamine and writing in a little room with no feedback generally doesn’t give us that.
When I tell you I am a very highly distracted person - I mean it. I used to call myself a compulsive multitasker. Though now I realize that was just me not wanting to make myself focus. Why? Because it’s hard. I’m not giving this advice from an ivory tower where I sit at my computer all day putting words into a manuscript, never getting lost in a wikipedia rabbit trail that takes me from Taika Waititi the history of piracy. I’m giving this advice as someone who has had a lot of impetus to try and wrangle my extremely shoddy attention span because I’m a happier and more well balance writer and human when I do it.
But your’e going to write better if your brain can get into a flow state and if you want to achieve that space you can’t keep interrupting yourself by clicking around different tabs in Safari or opening your email (calling myself out here)
So what do I suggest?
Start with timers - ten minutes, twenty minutes, whatever feels feasible for you. Don’t launch yourself in demanding a day of focus when you have no practice with sustained focus on writing. Start slow. Ten minutes on, ten minutes off.
Work at increasing your focus stamina - I’m working on that myself. My best trick is that, as someone who dictates, I get fully away from the computer. Dictation is fast, and not just because I can talk instead of type. But because it allows me to not even SIT at my computer which means I can’t click out of my window.
Don’t cheat - don’t. It’s self defeating. And here’s a really sad truth: no one is going to care if you don’t manage to do this. You have to care. No one is going to sit over your shoulder and manage your time for you which means - bad news - you have to do it.
My third tip: Word count doesn’t lie.
I don’t gauge my writing sessions in hours, I measure them in word count. The way I manage my 10+ book a year schedule is through a word count budget. So what that means is I count up how many days I have to write a book. Let’s say my deadline is January 15th. So I’d realistically subtract weekends, Thanksgiving and also Christmas Eve and Christmas. I also have two kids with birthdays in December, so I might take those days off too. That gives me 52 days to write the book. If it’s a 90,000 word book i’m going to divide that by 52 and that means I need to write 1730 words a day to get it finished.
I do this because it gives me something concrete to hang onto, it allows me to long range plan AND it allows me to have days where I totally implode, because rather than feeling guilt and panic on those days I can just redo my math equation and go: Ok that’s fine it just gives me a slightly higher daily word count.
A lot of not writing goes into writing, and I acknowledge that. But if I know I still have to get 1730 words in a day then that means I can’t go: oops I spent five hours researching beekeeping and then scrolled tiktok for three hours I WORKED ALL DAY. It forces some accountability and keeps me on track.
It also means when things are not flowing I can make an informed decision about whether or not I’m able to hit pause for the day and still hit my deadline just fine.
This method allows you to work in a way that works best for you. If you write three days a week you can still adapt it to fit your schedule. It encourages consistency, but in a way that works for you individually. I write five days a week, but it’s my job so I work it like a day job. That won’t work for everyone. But by going off of word count you can figure out how you need to budget words/time for your own goals.
And restating: Know your goals.
You have to know why you want to write more, or faster, or at all. If you don’t there are going to be a lot of days when doing ANYTHING else sounds more appealing. Because like any other endeavor, when writing is hard it becomes less fun, and you become less likely to want to do it. So having that goal, your reason why, in front of you is often the only thing that’s going to push you forward.
Is it to pay your bills?
Is it to make room for a passion project you want to write?
Is it to prove to yourself you can?
Knowing your reason is going to help with your motivation. And much like working to increase your attention span, no one is going to police this for you. But that is truly one of the hardest things about this. You can have writing friends to hold you accountable, but at the end of the day managing a writing schedule is self-directed and that is hard work. But I genuinely believe that if you start working on these things, you’ll make progress. And that’s the point. I have to reset on myself all the time and get back to a place where I'm doing what I know works best. For me, it isn’t about adjusting my settings and never having to readjust.
And that’s my last piece of advice: You have to know yourself.
That’s part of knowing your goals, but really in addition to that it’s helpful to understand how you work. Like I said, I know that I’ll have to restore myself to factory settings every few months. I’m cyclical, so I know I benefit from reevaluating and occasionally finding new ways of doing things.
If you read my previous post you already know I see everything as a work in progress and not a destination, which means I view my writing process as constantly being in progress, and me along with it, and this is no different. You can always change what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, how fast you’re doing it.
But this is how I do it. So now you know.