NaNoWriMo Without Sweat and Tears—Use Microbursts

How many words can you write in 5 minutes?

In a guest post at Editor Unleashed, Alegra Clarke writes: “Completing a NaNoWriMo taught me that there is more time to write in a day than we might think.” Putting that notion to the test, I’m right now setting a timer for what I’m calling a “microburst.” It’s a 5-minute sprint, no stopping, and it is about to begin… NOW.

This is a blog post, of course, and I draft nonfiction faster than most passages of fiction, but the key factor here, for me, is the challenge.

Okay. It’s 2:55 and going. I don’t seem to have pounded out much, do I? Yet my software gives me long horizontal lines, so that might distort my running sense of accomplishment. I’ll soon see—and I don’t have long to wait.

Writing fast, I think, is a technique that can be worked on, improved upon, brought to a point where it is a reliable skill. How’s that again? You can learn to write faster.

But why would you want to?

For starters, experience tells me that, where writing draft is concerned, faster might actually be better. Some of the best stuff I’ve ever written came so fast I could hardly get it down.

Then there’s Nanorwrimo. Who among us has not wished for the kind of fluency that produces 5,000 words in a sitting. I’ve hardly ever come close to that kind of speed. But then, I never systematically tried to develop it either.

What if I did?

With Nanowrimo looming, and a personal commitment to finish the perpetually unfinished Regenerating Jeff in that 30 day pressure cooker, I think a little speed gymming to bulk up my words-per-minute might just be a welcome boost for my confidence. What about you?

Okay, time’s up. My word count for this 5-minute drill was 235. Not very impressive at first glance. But wait. If a reasonable Nanowrimo goal is, say, 1700 per day (it takes 1667 to reach 50,000 in 30 days) then, theoretically—no, practically—I would need to program only seven 5-minute microbursts throughout the day. That’s doable. I might even be making my goals without even breaking a sweat.

Here’s an example of working this way: often, for fun, I dash off an initial draft of one of the 100 word stories I get assigned by Nick over at Name Your Tale. I try to take a first stab as soon it comes in, while it’s still fresh. I don’t set a timer, but after staring at the assigned title (that’s the way Name Your Tale works—the title is your prompt) I jump in and don’t let myself stop until I feel it’s over. I don’t pay much heed to word length—If I have 250 words when the microburst is over, that’s fine: when I reread, the expendable phrases and sentences almost shrink into oblivion voluntarily; similarly, useless words, thoughts, repetitions are yelling, “Cut me too, cut me too.” And I happily oblige. Cutting is fun when you know you’ve got something substantial enough to trim.

Or, to paraphrase the old joke about the dying actor’s last words, “Cutting is easy, creating is hard.”

Here’s a challenge. What are you working on now? Today? Set a timer for a 5-minute microburst and see what you get. Like it? Schedule another one. Rinse and repeat until it feels like a day’s work.

Seriously, could this be the ultimate secret weapon for winning Nanowrimo every time?

Tagged as: Fiction Writing, novel wririnting, Write a Better Novel