I’m trying something new these days, when it comes to getting my writing in. I used to write at various times of day, and I’d write for nearly an hour before taking a break. It worked, when I wrote. I could write about a thousand words an hour, give or take, that way. But it made things more difficult than they had to be. Carving an hour at a time out of my day, when raising kids at home and trying to do other paying work, was challenging at times.

So what am I doing different?

I’m writing in 30 minute chunks. Some people call them sprints, but 30 minutes doesn’t seem like a sprint, to me, but it seems to be working pretty well. I can stay pretty focused for a half hour, and I can put things off a lot easier when they only have to wait fifteen or twenty minutes instead of forty-five. Also, it’s easier to squeeze thirty minute chunks out of my day when I can’t find the time to do them all in a row.

The real amazing thing?

On average, I’m getting more words done per hour. Not a lot, but I’ve had 700 and 800 word half-hours. Yes, some people write much faster than that, but I don’t outline, which means I stop and think more than most outliners need to. I’m also not exactly the fastest typist in the world either, topping out about 70 words per minute.

I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s made it easy to hit my word count goals each day for the last two weeks without fail, and it means I’m still right on track for finishing this book on the 24th. Imagine that. Hitting a deadline.

Those are something new to me, too. I’ll talk about that next week.

For now, the book is roughly 50,000 words and counting.