The Art of Writing Fast (Part I)

By Chrissy Hicks

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The idea of writing FAST excites me, because it’s something I always wanted to do but believed there was some code I needed to crack before I could achieve results. I’m here to tell you that’s not true. There’s no code, no secret, no one-size-fits-all formula. Nope. And you get all the details here, in my new mini-series, for free.

Introduction

Writing fast isn’t for everyone, and it’s not always feasible. Note: I didn’t say it was impossible, nor am I saying some people can or can’t. What I am saying is not everyone will enjoy this method, and even for those who do, it may not work 100% of the time.

I think anyone can complete a novel, and I believe anyone can complete a novel fast, if they set their mind to it. NaNoWriMo is a fantastic challenge to start with, if you’ve never tried. And if you enjoy writing and haven’t heard of National Novel Writing Month, then I have to ask, where have you been?? Just kidding. The challenge involves writing 50,000 words in one month (particularly November, but you can pick any month to challenge yourself). The idea is to get words on paper, stop procrastinating, and finish the dang book.

Keep in mind: this does NOT mean you’ll have a polished, publication-ready manuscript by the end of your speedy writing adventures. But what you will have, is something to work with. As Jodi Picoult once said, “You can’t edit a blank page.” 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

In this first article, I’ll go over what fast writing is and why to write fast

Next, I’ll tackle how to do so, as well as when and where you might do so. Later, we’ll explore the editing process and why you should approach this at a slower pace to accomplish your best work. 

What is Fast Writing?

Simply put: it’s writing fast. Getting words on paper without too much thinking or hesitation. Again, NaNoWriMo is a great example because it encourages just that: writing a book of 50,000 words in 30 days, which equates to 1,667 words per day, or approximately 7 typed pages. 

When you focus on speeding through the completion of a first draft (or draft zero, as I prefer to call my initial rough drafts), there’s no time to overthink or second-guess. You are forced to put your inner critic aside (or locked in a cage in a land far far away) so you can focus on simply getting the story out as quickly as possible.

Why Write Fast?

There are several benefits. Here’s 5 reasons WHY:

1. High-volume productivity

Let’s say you write adult fiction novels, and the average word count for these is about 80,000 (still unsure? Click HERE for a free, fun quiz on Reedsy to get a fair estimate). Now imagine, you dedicated time and energy to blasting through the first draft at a rate of 1,667 words per day (we’ll use NaNoWriMo rules for the sake of example). That would land you a completed first draft in 48 days, approximately a month and a half! Then there’s the editing, of course. Let’s factor in 2-3 months of applying the same amount of time you did writing to fine-tuning your draft. From start to your finishing touches, the whole process will take about 4-5 months. Now, you need a break from that book. So, you send it off to beta readers, editors, and friends with an eye for grammatical errors. And while they’re all reviewing and prepping your feedback, you’re already working on your next book! See the pattern? 

This kind of rhythm won’t work for everyone. But if you plan to write prolifically, this isn’t a bad formula for knocking out at least 2 books a year. 

2. Keep the Creative Juices flowing

If you prefer to take a break from an initial rough draft before editing (as I do), then you could knock out two books sequentially, and return to the first book to edit. Once editing is done, you’ll have had a sufficient break from the second book and can return to edit that one. This way you maintain a writing habit, keep the momentum going, and still give your rough drafts a “rest” period before returning to them. That or, perhaps you could turn to another creative endeavor (painting, music, ice sculpturing…take your pick!*).

*Pun absolutely intended. 

3. Practice makes better

I’ve often heard people say, “practice makes perfect.” But we’re not aiming for perfect—that’s an impossible task. We’re aiming to be better each day. How do you get better at writing? By writing! Like with anything else, we can study and read about craft all day but if we don’t actually put pen to paper (or fingers to the keyboard), how else are we going to teach our brains to push past writer’s block? The more often you write, the closer you’ll get to your writer’s voice. The more often you write, and edit, and implement feedback, the more often you’ll understand the mistakes you’re making and not make them in the first place. This in turn, means churning out better and better first drafts. Tada! 

4.  Overcome fear of the blank page

Have you ever had this big idea for a novel, then sat down to start and stared at the blank page, wondering…where do I start? Am I even the right person to write this thing? When you fast write, you don’t give yourself the opportunity to doubt your writing ability. You just do it. Think: Nike

5. Write it fast, write it bad

Okay, I don’t really mean that. Not everything you write in a first draft is going to be bad. But a lot of it will be. There will be all sorts of room for tweaking and deleting and adding. Characters who probably didn’t need to be there, “Sally” that became “Sandy” halfway through the manuscript and you didn’t even notice, flat dialogue, lackluster scenery, flowery descriptions that have nothing to do with anything… you catch my drift. My point is simply this: give yourself permission to write it however it comes out, as bad as it might possibly present itself. Because anything is fixable, but you can’t fix something that is nothing.

Okay… do I have you convinced? You might think, this is nuts. Or I have no time. Or where did I leave the remote? Or, perhaps, you’re chomping at the bit, ready to knock out that first draft, indexes poised at the F and J keys on your QWERTY keyboard. If so, stay tuned for my five ways on HOW to do that in Part II.

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Chrissy’s work has appeared in three consecutive issues of Bridgewater State University’s “Embracing Writing” book for first-year freshmen. Her writing portfolio also includes publications in The Broadkill Review, SUSIE Mag, The Storyteller, and informative pieces for a local online newspaper. One of her unpublished novels, Foul Play, was a Suspense Finalist for the 2022 Claymore Award, and an excerpt from her unpublished novel Overshadow won Top Three Finalist of the 2024 Thomas Mabry Creative Writing Award. Though her background is in counseling, having earned a master’s degree in this field, when it comes to the art of writing, she’s an autodidact. She studies books she loves and enjoys completing various creative writing classes online, and attending writer’s conferences whenever she can; Killer Nashville is one of her favorites. Additionally, she’s volunteered since 2023 as a general editor for the Killer Nashville Magazine. She resides in Tennessee with her family, their talkative Husky, and a frenetic cat. You can find her online here: https://chrissyhicks.wordpress.com/ where she occasionally blogs about the writing life and reviews craft books.

Productivity

By Dale T Phillips

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“Writing a novel is like driving at night with your headlights on- you can only see a little of the road ahead, but you can make the whole journey that way.”

—E.L. Doctorow

You write a novel the way you’d eat an elephant—one small bite at a time.

Writing even one novel is a lot of damned hard work. Continuing to write them is little short of obsessive. But to be successful, you’ll have to keep doing it over and over. Unlike singers, however, you get to do different ones each time, not the same thing over and over. 

Every writer has a different way of doing the work. Two major types of writers are (with many of us doing one or the other, or both):

• Plotters, who carefully detail everything before writing, doing the outline, and setting the scene first.

• Pantsers, who write “by the seat of their pants,” just jumping in without a complete structure in advance. Dean Wesley Smith uses this method, which he calls “Writing into the Dark.” He has an advantage, though, in having done it several hundred times!

It’s good to keep files of ideas, titles, character sketches, and turn of phrases. When you need a new idea, scan these files for things that spark your imagination. I’ve got hundreds of potential titles in one file and ideas for new stories in another. I’ll never run out of things to write.

The best way to be productive is to write every day if you can. It builds the habit. Don’t wait for inspiration. If you can do that, it’s a wonderful way to be productive. On the other hand, I do it the “wrong” way (even though fellow writers compliment me on my productivity, which I find amusing). I have to be inspired by the ancient Greek concept of “The Muse,” which many say is not effective, because you won’t write as much. Lucky for me, I take The Muse seriously, and She often drops by to tell me what to write next. It sometimes messes me up because I shift projects at a moment’s notice. 

For too long, I was working on three different novels and not completing any of them. One was 75 percent done, another was 50 percent done, and the third was 25 percent done. Which all adds up to zero percent finished. There were some publishing strategy changes and various issues in the narratives which bogged me down. 

Then I finished one novel, but before I got to the other two, another novel sprang into being. I wrote most of that, and got stuck again when illness, depression, and Covid-19 hit in rapid succession. I was down and out for too long before I decided that writing would give me back my life. Indeed, it did, and I burst forth with a completed and published novel, a new story, and a finished draft of another novel. 

Write whenever you want or can: early morning, late at night, on lunch breaks, whenever. Find the time that works best for you. Short stretches or long marathon sessions, it doesn’t matter. Keep a notebook handy for ideas that come to you when you’re doing other things like driving, showering, or taking a walk (when many ideas turn up). 

If you have trouble, try the “Pomodoro Method” of sprints and movement. http://graemeshimmin.com/the-pomodoro-technique-for-writers/

NaNoWriMo is a fun method to put out a lot of work in just a few weeks. If you’re having trouble getting words down, think about giving it a try to kickstart your brain into fevered word production.

One good habit is to set aside your writing time as the primary task for the day. Writers procrastinate better than anyone else, and it’s so easy to get sidetracked that writing time can easily slip away. Write first, do all else later. Don’t do research in your writing time because it’s easy (and lots of fun) to fall down the rabbit hole. If you come to a passage that needs to be researched, just mark it as such and move on.

Doing the Math 

If you’re just starting out, you may produce at a slower rate. That’s okay, it will just take you longer. If you’re going to be a successful indie writer, you’ll need a fair amount of good work. Do you know how long on average it takes you do finish, edit, and publish each book? If not, start with an estimation of writing one book a year, 50-100,000 words. When you get more experienced, you’ll definitely want to increase this output, but it’s a good place to begin. At that pace, it will take you roughly five years to write five good books, which will (simply by that output) put you in the top 20% of all published writers. 

Have you got at least five good books in you, just as a start?

So, your first novel. Say 75,000 words, and you want it done in a year. That’s only 1500 words a week (a few hundred a day) and around 5 pages. Fifty weeks later, you’ve got 250-plus pages, and those 75,000 words. Congratulations! You’ve done more than many who set out to do this. It may not be the best yet, but you got it done.

Celebrate!

Then get to work on the second novel. You’ve practiced for a year, so maybe this one will go faster. Up your word count to 2500 words a week. Still quite doable. This means you’ll get this one done in just over six months. How about that? Almost half the time. You learned a lot more, and it’s probably better than book one.

Celebrate! 

Write the third book, slightly better pace. Finish. 

Celebrate! 

Two years total, three books under your belt.

Starting to get the hang of it? Hopefully. Rinse and repeat. 

If you need a million words to get really good, how many can you write in a year? A book a year is a decent pace, better than most, but for more success, you might want to step it up some. If you can put out 5,000 words a week, you can have 250,000 in a year, and a million words in only four years. 

One book a year might net you a few hundred dollars in income (or a few thousand), but you want more, you want volume. The more you write and publish, the more you’ll make. If you want to make 48,000 dollars a year, you’ll need 4,000 dollars a month, or roughly two thousand total sales at two dollars profit each, or 500 sales a week. One book will sell x number of copies, ten books will sell much more. So you want to get to ten good books published, as quickly as possible. That takes discipline and dedication. 

Figure out how much you make per hour, and scale up. If you make a penny per word, an hour of good writing at one thousand words nets you roughly ten dollars. That’s your scale. If you want to make $48,000 a year, you have to either write faster or get paid more. Daunting, yes. 

After six to ten books, you should be selling more of everything. Each new book adds to the total. The “Halo effect” means that other books of yours are bought because people discovered a first book, then went on to others. Especially if you have a series or connected books. 

In the old way of publishing, some authors could get by with one book a year. Today, you’ll likely have to be far more productive to make a decent income. It’s up to you to determine your level of success.

Dean Wesley Smith calls his copyright and production output The Magic Bakery.

Imagine that you have a storefront with all your items for sale within. If you have one book in one format, you have one product. Have you ever walked into a store and bought a single product? You likely won’t stay long. As a successful author, you want variety and choice, different price points, and for shoppers to come back again and again to buy more. A series can bring them back for more. Put your work out as an e-book, in print, as audio, and other formats, such as graphic novels. The other aspect of The Magic Bakery is that as an indie author, you can keep licensing pieces of each product, while keeping the original. Traditional publishers buy the whole product, which you cannot resell. Dean made thousands of dollars from one story, by licensing different pieces of it. Make your work into a virtual storefront, and fill it with tempting merchandise. 

It’s amusing to me that when I set up my display at book events (24 books currently, plus anthologies with others), people look at the output, and think I’m prolific, when I feel like a slacker who doesn’t do enough. I smile and say, “If you want it badly enough, you’ll work for it.” I sell more than most writers at these events, because of my sheer variety, and the different price points (with prices shown for each book, so browsers don’t have to ask). A few secrets of my success. I point out that someone can grab a book of short stories for little more than a cup of coffee or get a good novel for half the price of a hardcover in a bookstore. And because people love a bargain, I’ll give them a price break if they want to buy more than one book. By having so much available, with ebooks and audio of everything, I’ll offer them other free versions of the work when they purchase print (which costs me nothing). People will remember and come back in subsequent years to buy more. And every year they come back, there’s more to sell. 

Advantage, productivity.

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Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime.