I’m going to write this post in 20 minutes.

Being able to write fast is a crucial skill for writers of every stripe, especially freelancers who work to order, often under tight deadlines, as well as journalists trying to get a scoop. Bloggers, too, can benefit from writing fast, so they can move on to the writing that pays the bills, advances their careers, or satisfies their muse.

The key to writing fast is turning off your internal editor, that little voice in your head that tells you when a sentence or choice of words sucks. You have to fight that painful urge to go back and correct what you’ve just written, to fix the typos, or to pick just the right word, every single time. 

This boils down to a matter of trust — trust in yourself. You have to know that when you’re done madly drafting your piece, you’ll go back and fix things up. The important part is getting something to work with on the screen or on paper. Your writerly instinct is as much an editorial instinct as anything else — by separating the act of getting thoughts out of your head and shaping them into a finished, publishable piece, you can save a lot of time as your brain stays “locked in” on one task or the other, instead of split between both.

Here are my tips for writing quickly:

1. Have a plan.

An outline is a good start, but for shorter pieces (and even longer pieces if you just aren’t the kind of writer who outlines) just having a good idea of what you want to say before you start writing is going to shave plenty of time off your writing. A good capture strategy is key, too — get ideas down as they occur to you, flesh them out whenever you have a minute or two, and be ready to go when you sit down to write.

2. Have a formula.

I write a ton of blog posts, between Lifehack and The Writer’s Technology Companion and a bunch of other sites I contribute to as a guest. I also write a lot of articles for mainstream and trade outlets. For each of them, I’ve developed a kind of formula — not a fixed, immutable template, but a general set of rules I follow. Like the numbered, sub-headed list (this article, for example) — having this pattern in my head means I don’t have to think about how to move from one point to the next when I’m actually writing.

3. Don’t stop for ignorance.

Write what you know. And BS what you don’t know — at least in your draft. I do this all the time when I’m writing up pieces based on interviews with sources — instead of scrubbing back and forth through my recording of the interview, referring back to my notes, or (god forbid) writing a transcript, I just make up quotes that seem kind of like what they said, and that fit the point I’m making. Then I go back and replace my made-up quotes with actual quotes from my intereview. 

If you don’t know a fact or date or name, just insert XXX or [EXPERT’S NAME] or [SECTION ON FISHING] wherever you’re stuck or need further research, and come back to it later. I like to highlight those sections in yellow to make them easier to find.

 4. Kill distractions. 

This is self-explanatory — if you’re going to write fast, you can’t stop to do anything else. Find a quiet place, put on your most glowering face (to scare off those who would dare interrupt you), and get to work,  Put on a little music if it drowns out other noises or helps you stay focused, but otherwise make sure there’s nothing going on that might catch your attention. You need it all for your writing.

5. Set a timer. 

I have a timer running on my PC right now, set to 20 minutes. That keeps me on my toes — writing this is a race with the timer. It also keeps me motivated — I know the timer will go off if I stop, so I need to just keep going. A lot of writers claim to write best when they’re up against a deadline — setting a timer creates your own deadline, not a day or two from now but in 20 minutes or so. GO GO GO!

6. Use tools you know.

While I’m the last person in the world who would suggest you never look at new tools, when time is of the essence, use the tools you know well and are comfortable using. Don’t waste time trying to figure out how to make italics or boldface text, or how to double-indent or single-space a quotation, when you’re trying to write fast. Just fire up your Trusty Old Friend (for me, it’s the simplicity of Google Docs) and write. Save the experimentation for when you have a little leisure time to work

Well, there you go — I’ve got over 5 minutes left on the stopwatch (as of the beginning of this sentence) and what I think is a pretty nice article. I’ll go back, fix up the formatting, correct any typos or poor grammar, make sure I expressed myself clearly, and cut and paste this into my site. The end. 

(Word count: 883; Total time: 16:05 mins)

Why do you do NaNoWriMo? What benefits have you gotten from your participation?

I  signed up for NaNoWriMo to because I’m the eternal procrastinator but I tend to respond well to watching pretty graphs grow and feeling that other people could be watching me. Although I didn’t participate in the forums a lot last year, I read what a lot of other people were talking about and felt like I was part of something much bigger than just me and my computer in a small room in Perth.
The biggest benefit was learning that I *can* write a lot, when I have to. Since then I’ve been able to push myself a bit more because I know that back in November I wrote 50,000 words in less than a month.

How did you keep yourself inspired and motivated during NaNoWriMo?

A month is a short enough time (for me) that I could keep myself motivated mostly by wanting to be able to see the bars on my daily word count graph get higher. Obviously this wouldn’t work long term, but for a month it’s possible, and that kept me motivated. Also, I told quite a few people that I was taking part (and blogged about) so I didn’t want to have to admit defeat.

As for being inspired, that was surprisingly easy but if I got a bit uninspired I would browse the forums and see what kinds of titles other people had for their novels and how many words they’d written.

What sort of planning, if any, are you doing this year before you start writing?

I’m doing much more planning this year. Last year I didn’t plan at all, really, and while I still managed to get plenty written, the rewriting is an ongoing nightmare and I’ve had to throw a lot out. So this year I am getting much more detailed with chapter outlines etc — but only for the first 3/4 of the novel, the ending is still a mystery to me. That’s largely because I can’t quite figure out what the characters will really do, and because I think that’s a good way to write — let them decide for me. I think if I knew the entire story first I might not be interested enough to write it.

What are some of the tools you use to keep yourself organized and on-track during NaNoWriMo? How do you use them?

Nothing too fancy, but the graph included in your NaNoWriMo profile page was a godsend. Loved it. I did also (geekily) use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of how many words I needed to finish each day to stay on target (depending on how many I’d already written — this number often varied).

How do you manage your time during NaNoWriMo to make time for writing?

Badly. And I became a social hermit, spending several weekends locked in front of the computer.

What advice do you have for other writers doing NaNoWriMo for the first time?

Try to plan a structure for your novel even if you feel resistant to this idea.
Write extra (more than the daily target) for the first week or two so that the second week or two are easier.

Always stop writing in the middle of something you’re enjoying so it’s easy to start again.

Don’t worry if some of what you write is drivel, it is quantity not quality at this point.

Why do you do NaNoWriMo? What benefits have you gotten from your participation?

Even though I’m usually founding ranting/raving about everything but the written word, I’m really a writer at heart. November is my excuse to sit with my laptop for hours on end, typing away at something that will never be read, never edited, never criticized — writing just for the hell of it. I tend to write about real frustrations and then there are the zombies, flying alligators and super heroes that keep me sane in my daily endeavors.

How did you keep yourself inspired and motivated during NaNoWriMo?

I complain a lot. To everyone. This is my fifth year participating (and winning) … I’ve lost a lot of friends.

What sort of planning, if any, are you doing this year before you start writing?

None. I usually jump in fresh, without guidelines. It’s easier for me to up word counts when I’m not focused on strict plot paths and whatnot. I’d rather kill a character. Bring him back. Kill him again. Then bring him back as an undead antihero before making NaNoWriMo more than the chore it is.

What are some of the tools you use to keep yourself organized and on-track during NaNoWriMo? How do you use them?

A partner in suffering. My NaNoWriMo buddy and I write for 30 minutes at a time, pausing in between to read our stuff (crap), rest, smoke cigarettes, watch TV and gear up for the next 30-minute sprint. We help each other think up plot twists, character development, raunchy dialogue, etc.

What advice do you have for other writers doing NaNoWriMo for the first time?

1. Don’t care: Ignore typos, run-ons, incomprehensible ramblings. If you get too caught up in the nuances of decent prose, you’ll never make it to 50,000 words.

2. Cheat: It’s “sweat shop,” not “sweatshop” — “tear drop” not “teardrop.” Name your protagonist ‘Flaming Kelly Action Bot the Third’ (that’s six words, plenty more with repeats!).

3. Back up your files: Save a copy to your Gmail, your blog, your desktop every thousand words in. Never rely on a flash drive.

Why do you do NaNoWriMo?

I did NaNoWriMo last year on a whim. A couple of friends on a forum I frequent were doing it, so I decided to give it a try too. I had not been writing much as of late, and I thought it might be the kick in the pants I needed. It worked out so well that I decided to do it again this year.

What benefits have you gotten from your participation?

I was right, it was the kick in the pants I needed. I already had a story idea, and NaNo both got me started, and kept me going.

How did you keep yourself inspired and motivated during NaNoWriMo?

I had the luxury of having well developed characters from previous stories I had written. I already had a seed of a story in mind. So, once I decided I was going to do it I sat down and developed a detailed outline and a detailed setting, complete with maps. With those in hand, the story almost wrote itself.

What sort of planning, if any, are you doing this year before you start writing?

I am doing another mystery this year, but not with the same detective or area. Last year’s story was with a private detective in South Carolina, a guy I had written a lot about. This year I’m using a Police Detective in St. Louis. So I have to do a lot of research in just how the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department works, and how it interacts with the Major Case Squad. I am working up my outline now, so I hope to be ready to go at the starting gun. I’m from St. Louis, so at least this time I won’t have to do a lot of geographic research.

What are some of the tools you use to keep yourself organized and on-track during NaNoWriMo? How do you use them?

I don’t know that I use a lot of tools, other than the outline, maps, and the Internet. Of course, I have my favorite bookmarks.

How do you manage your time during NaNoWriMo to make time for writing?

I generally write at night, after dinner. If I’m in the flow, I just lose track of time until I realize it’s time for bed. I have a day job, so I can’t ignore that. When I’m writing, my family generally leaves me to it, so I have very few distractions.

What advice do you have for other writers doing NaNoWriMo for the first time?

Start out with a plot, not just a vague idea of a story. In other words, know where you are going and why you (your characters) are going there. Some people don’t like outlines, but if you can work with one, develop a detailed outline before the start date. But don’t be afraid to deviate from the outline. Sometimes good stuff just happens.

Why do you do NaNoWriMo?

I’m addicted now. I don’t write as much as I’d like to during the rest of the year because I do have other important obligations.  This is the highlight of the year for the writer in me, the month when storytelling gets first priority. I do it strictly for fun and for me and it fills the well that lets me balance everything for the rest of the year.  Or at least till the next writer’s conference. 

What benefits have you gotten from your participation?

I finally understand why it’s so important to have a complete draft before getting to the revision and editing. I have also learned flexibility: the process that worked so brilliantly the first year has never worked as well again.  Each story has it’s own rhythm and its own needs. 

One year I outlined about six major scenes ahead of time and then used the month to link them together.  The following year I worked from portrait pictures I found online, in-depth character sketches and used current events news coverage to keep me going.  Last year I had a hard time coming up with a good story line at all – I only had the picture of my main character in my head.  I forced myself to start anyway and let all the discovery happen as I wrote.  For a control freak like me, that was more gut wrenching than jumping out of a plane.  I think.  It worked far better than I thought possible.  I find it much easier now to relax and go with the flow.

How did you keep yourself inspired and motivated during NaNoWriMo?

Quotes, music, walks, candles, coffee, naps and, most important, online writing buddies.  I also love leaving off in the middle of something so I’m primed to start back up at the earliest possible opportunity.

What sort of planning, if any, are you doing this year before you start writing?

Just yesterday I decided that this year I would expand a short story that has potential to be something bigger.  I’ll do more in-depth character sketches and probably some brief storyboards for an opening scene, perhaps a closing scene, and about three major turning points–a technique loosely based on The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray (the old edition; I haven’t read the recently released updated version).   

What are some of the tools you use to keep yourself organized and on-track during NaNoWriMo? How do you use them?

I like the NaNo report card and calendars that are downloadable from forum links on the site. The report card gives me a visual: I like seeing progress. But it can get discouraging when there isn’t any, so I’m not always good at keeping them updated daily.

Last year I numbered every scene I wrote and then did a scene-by-scene track on an Excel spreadsheet: who, where, when, what happened, and “remember this” as column headers, then numbered a row for each scene. Part way through I added a “check or change” column to jot notes where I thought there might be problems so I wouldn’t feel tempted to go back and do any editing right then.

The spreadsheet helped tremendously because I didn’t write in order.  I wrote scenes that grabbed me when they grabbed me, whether the story was ready for them at that point or not.  Then when I got stuck, I’d figure out where I needed to add transitional material and could generally get myself going again by brainstorming myself or with my writing buddies.  Also a glance at the spread sheet at the end of a writing session let me subconsciously work out what might be needed to bridge gaps as I went about whatever else I had to do.

How do you manage your time during NaNoWriMo to make time for writing?

My motto:  Early in the day, early in the week, early in the month.  I do my best not to procrastinate, because I never know what will pop up.  When I have time I use it.  I am a homeschooling mom, but now my last student is on auto-pilot as far as school goes and requires very little of my time, so my days are more flexible than most.

Planning ahead in September and October helps a bunch too.  We run a small property-management business from home, so I get filing, bookkeeping, etc. up to date by Oct 31st, schedule bill payments online for November, and clear out as much of my other obligations as possible. My family seems to stay happy if they’re fed.  So I plan plenty of quick, easy, crock-pot and/or freezer meals. My son is a good cook, and he’ll pitch in to help me when I need it. And I write like crazy during football games or whenever the house is empty.  On days when the interruptions get to be too much (usually phone calls) I escape to the library for a while; that’s always cheaper than escaping to Starbucks or Panera Bread.

What advice do you have for other writers doing NaNoWriMo for the first time?

Just write.  Don’t edit.  At first I had to really work at this, because my internal editor didn’t like being ignored.  But it got easier, and most importantly, it became fun.  The freedom allowed me to experiment and discover like I’d never done before.  That’s what got me hooked. 

I start every year telling myself it doesn’t matter if the writing makes sense.  It doesn’t matter if there are gaps.  If I hit a wall and don’t know what comes next, who cares.  Write the end.  Or write the next scene I want to write.  There are no rules at this stage of the game. 

An extra bonus that comes in the months following, I come to love my internal editor.  We have fun tweaking and making the story stronger.  When you have an entire manuscript to work with, rewriting and reworking the story is so much easier. No matter how bad you think your manuscript is at the end of November, you’ll know more about writing then than you did when you went in.   It is so true that with writing, the learning is in the doing.

Image by slack12 via Flickr

There comes a time in nearly every big writing project when you just can’t seem to move forward. Maybe you’ve written yourself into a corner and aren’t sure how to get out of it, maybe the end just seems too far away to be reachable, or maybe you burned through your initial enthusiasm and it just isn’t fun any more.

The difference between a writer and a dabbler is what you do at that point. A lot of folks will give up – pack up their manuscript and put it away, telling themselves they’ll pick it up again when their inspiration returns. Unfortunately, it rarely does. The real writers are the ones who push through these hard moments, doing whatever they have to do to overcome or bypass the thorny problems that keep them from reaching the end of their manuscript.

There are many strategies a writer can use to get up and over the hump. Try some of these ideas to help you deal with your own writing challenges and get your project done.

1. Change the scene.

Not in your story but in your life. Most writers are acclimated to particular environments where they feel comfortable – we literally get conditioned to associate where we write with the act of writing, like Pavlov’s dogs (if Pavlov had trained dogs to write books). But the mental processes that make our usual writing places conducive to writing can work against us when frustration strikes. Facing the same problem in the same place every day can put you deep in a rut that’s hard to escape without changing things up.

Something as simple as writing somewhere new can be just the change you need to trigger a breakthrough. Take your laptop to a different room, or outside, or to the library, or to a coffee house. Drive out of town with a notebook and box of pencils and write in the mountains, the desert, or the woods. Head to the beach or a friend’s house or a hotel – whatever it takes to break the association between where you write and what you’re writing – or anxiously not writing.

2. Switch mediums.

Just as changing where you write can help loosen up whatever’s blocking your way, changing your medium can help get the creativity flowing. Writing with a pen or pencil has a different feel — and involves different parts of the brain – than writing on a computer. Even switching to a different keyboard or word processor might throw some switch deep in the recesses of your unconscious mind to get the idea machine powered up again.

3. Skip a bit.

It’s easy to get caught up in the narrative flow of your work, trying to write straight through from beginning to end. But there’s no rule that says you have to write in the same order your finished product will be. In fact, often jumping forward in a piece can help solve difficult problems, since you get a more concrete idea of where you have to get to when you go back to fill in.

For example, I recently saw Neil Gaiman talking about his recent work The Graveyard Book. After years of trying – and failing – to write the book from the beginning, Gaiman finally decided to start in the middle, writing what would become chapter 4 first. Once he did that, he said, he knew how the story got there and where it had to go – the rest of the book just fell into place.

4. Go random.

This is a brainstorming trick that can help you write through a difficult patch. The idea is, when you’re stuck, find something totally random and force yourself to work it into the text. Open a dictionary and pick a word with your eyes closed, spin around in the middle of the room and point – it doesn’t matter how, just find something accidental to inject into your work.

The goal here is to change up the problem you’re working through, thus shifting the mental process away from whatever’s got you stuck. Instead of trying to figure out how your killer got into the locked room, you’re trying to figure out how to work the word “asparagus” into the scene – freeing up your mental “gears” to work on the first problem in the background. You might end up cutting the random bit later, but by then it will have served its purpose – and who knows, you might like that part, too!

5. Take a break.

It’s a strange thing about our brains – much of their best work is done when we’re not paying conscious attention. That’s one reason why so many ideas strike in the shower or while you’re driving – with your mind preoccupied by the matters at hand, the unconscious mind is free to work on the thorny problems that are keeping you up at night.

The tricks I’ve listed so far all try to shake things up so the unconscious can do its job, but in many cases, just stopping whatever you’re doing and working on something else can be enough. When frustration strikes, get up and take a walk, go for a drive (assuming you have a really, really fuel-efficient vehicle; in fact, why not take the horse-and-buggy instead?), watch a mindless sitcom, write a letter to your grandma, wash the dog, or – why not? – take a shower. Just make sure you have something to write on so you’re ready when inspiration comes a-knockin’.

6. Write crap.

Probably 90% of the writer’s block in the world comes from perfectionism, the insidious need to bring forth polished brilliance with every keystroke or jab of the pen.

Feh!

Look, you’re going to revise. I know it, you know it, William Zinsser knows it. You have to trust yourself enough to recognize crappy writing when you revise – and if you do that, then you can relax a little bit now and put some crappy writing down for your later revising self to catch.

So, if you can’t figure out the right way to say something, say it the wrong way. Give characters out-of-character dialogue. Write purple prose. Use 40 adverbs in every sentence. Just get down the general idea of what should be there and move on. If you feel uncomfortable about besmirching your otherwise perfect (NOT!) manuscript with such foulness, go ahead and highlight it or make the font color red so you know you’ll catch it on your next pass, but whatever you do, don’t stop writing until you figure it out – just write.

Sooner or later you’ll get through the rough patch and the ideas will start flowing again – and you won’t have to waste time rebuilding your momentum.

7. Read.

This is really a variation on “Take a break” above, but reading offers writers something different from other activities – it reminds us of what we wanted to do and be in the first place. Letting yourself be transported away by a favorite author’s words can help you find your own writerly self and return to the task you love. Better yet, read crap – I find there’s nothing quite so inspiring as the thought of how utterly awful some of the stuff that makes it into print, and even onto best-seller lists, is. Nothing like lowering the bar a little bit to give yourself the strength to tackle your own creative problems.

There’s an old saying that if someone asks you how your writing’s going and you haven’t written that day, you can’t answer “badly”. For the writing to go badly, you have to be writing. You can always fix up bad writing; you can’t fix up no writing. In the end, the best way to deal with the problems that threaten to keep you from writing is to just keep on writing, no matter how bad the lines that flow from your pen or across your screen end up being. Because that’s what writers do – we write.

Good luck.

Sonja finds the camaraderie of NaNoWriMo a powerful motivator for writing, and can be found on the NaNoWriMo forums as “streetmouse”. You can read her advice for NaNoWriMo participants on her blog, White Picket Fences. For more information about Sonja, check out her website.

Why do you do NaNoWriMo? What benefits have you gotten from your participation?

My first year doing NaNoWriMo, I just wanted to see if I could write a novel. At all… in a month or in however long it took. As it turned out, I managed to win my first year, and that gave me the confidence to try to become a novelist. Now I do NaNoWriMo to keep proving to myself that I can finish novels. I don’t think novels get easier to write, I think you just have to know you’ve done it before and can do it again. I’ve finished two novels because of NaNoWriMo and gotten a confidence boost every year, knowing I can bang out a lot of words really fast.

How did you keep yourself inspired and motivated during NaNoWriMo?

I participate a lot in the forums, and especially in the chat room. I love getting egged on and I love to egg on my friends. I do a lot of word wars and a lot of complaining about novel writing being HAAAARD. The social aspects keep me going. And, I won’t lie, the competition helps too.

What sort of planning, if any, are you doing this year before you start writing?

I’ve got an outline and (shh!) the first little bit of a story done this year, so I’m ahead of the game. I always do outlines before I start writing. I am definitely NOT a seat-of-the-pants writer.

What are some of the tools you use to keep yourself organized and on-track during NaNoWriMo? How do you use them?

I love love love NaNoWriMo’s new tracking tools that let you compulsively check your wordcount and percentage and targets and all that good statistical stuff. I actually keep my own spreadsheet on non-NaNo months so I can do the same thing. It’s the competition thing again: I want to be ahead of the curve! My outline also keeps me going, especially when I sit down to write a scene. If I have an outline, at least I have some vague idea of what to write.

How do you manage your time during NaNoWriMo to make time for writing?

I write in the spare moments I can get, like lunch. I used to write for an hour every day on the bus. Sadly, I drive to work now, so that’s a no-go. I’ve been known to sneak in a few sentences at work, but I find that cutting out evening TV time is the best method for me. I sit next to my husband on the couch, pop in my headphones, and tap away while he watches his favorite shows or surfs the web.

What advice do you have for other writers doing NaNoWriMo for the first time?

Participate! Play with all the toys, use all the stuff on the website, buy the t-shirt, OWN it! The more you invest, the more you’ll get out.

Why do you do NaNoWriMo? What benefits have you gotten from your participation?

It’s a great way to kick your writing into gear.  You don’t have any excuses during this.  You just write.  And really, isn’t that what being a writer is all about?  The forums are also a good way to meet other writers, and the in person write-ins are a blast as well.

How did you keep yourself inspired and motivated during NaNoWriMo?

It can be tough, but talking with people doing NaNo as well can definitely help.  Also, my drive to actually become a novelist propelled me along.

What sort of planning, if any, are you doing this year before you start writing?

I’m doing more planning this year than in any other.  I’m working on the plot and characters and I’ll have that all printed out and placed in a binder once November first rolls around.  I’m hoping that this will help keep my story on track so I have something salable at the end of the month.  I may even have an outline.  Then, all I’ll have to do is write.

What are some of the tools you use to keep yourself organized and on-track during NaNoWriMo? How do you use them?

The website has good counters to help you track your word count.  In the past, I even had an excel spreadsheet that tracked how many words I wrote each day and had nice graphs.  I’m not sure what I’m doing this year, but I really did like that spreadsheet.  I may go back to it.

How do you manage your time during NaNoWriMo to make time for writing?

I set daily word goals.  It doesn’t matter how long I take, I need to meet that goal.  And honestly, if you can’t even take a half hour out of your day to write, then maybe this isn’t for you.

What advice do you have for other writers doing NaNoWriMo for the first time?

Don’t worry about whether what you’re writing is good.  The whole point is to push through any blocks and just write.  Don’t go back and edit or fix paragraphs because it’ll just slow you down.  Instead, wait until you are completely done with the first draft before you start perfecting the story.

 

Image by churl via Flickr

It’s November and for thousands of writers, that means National Novel Writing Month (or “NaNoWriMo”) a grueling exercise in creativity and self-discipline with the goal of creating a 50,000 word novel manuscript in 30 days.

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year – I don’t have any pressing desire to write a novel at the moment, and I’m a little overbalanced already juggling two full-time jobs (teaching and freelance writing) already. But though I won’t be working towards a completed manuscript, I’ll have something in common with those writers who are doing NaNoWriMo this year – like them, I’ll be writing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1700 words a day, pretty much every day in November. Unlike them, I’ll do the same thing in December, then in January, and on and on.

While I admire the single-mindedness of the NaNoWriMo participants, the dogged determination to produce a novel, the fact is that writers who write for a living are always in NaNoWriMo mode. I figure I write somewhere between 300,000 – 400,000 words a year for publication, plus countless work I produce that either doesn’t get published or gets circulated informally (on academic listservs, for instance). That works out to about 1200–1400 words a day, 250 days a year, not far off from the 1700 words a NaNoWriMo writer needs to average every day in November to hit the 50,000-word mark.

I don’t say this to brag – frankly, it isn’t brag-worthy. It’s just what a working writer has to do. There are plenty of writers who are more productive than I am – and plenty of writers with more on their plate than I have who manage to write as much. The point isn’t to brag, but to talk about how I, and so many others, manage to sustain a reasonably high level of productivity day in and day out, in the hopes that it will give some of the NaNoWriMo writers out there a little inspiration in their long slog towards 50,000 words.

Here, then, are 7 tips to help keep you focused on your writing goals. I’m assuming you’ve already set goals (SMART goals, even!) – if you’re taking the NaNoWriMo challenge, the goals are more or less set for you: 50,000 words by November 30, with accountability provided by NaNoWriMo’s word count tracking.

1. Make a commitment.

Whether you write year-round or just during NaNoWriMo, at least 90% of getting to “done” is having the right mind-set. Making a commitment doesn’t just mean sitting down and grinding the words out day after day, but feeling every day’s writing as an expression of who you are and the choices you have made. You have to be able to see yourself as a writer, and/or as a NaNoWriMo winner, not just in the future but in the now — the words you write today have to count as you write them, not in some imagined future if you reach your goals.

In fact, commitment has as much to do with failure as with success. Commitment means that you’ll be as happy to work your ass off for 30 days and not hit 50,000 words as if you do reach 50,000 words. Because if you really try, if you really put yourself out there and you still don’t make it, you’ll know there is room for you to grow as a writer – and you’ll have a good idea of where those opportunities lie.

2. Set a schedule.

Think about your life. There’s things that are important to you, things you have to do – classes, work, dates, your kids’ activities, business flights, doctor’s appointments. Then there are things that are less important, things you’ll try to fit in when you have a spare moment – reading a new novel, visiting the museum, sorting your family photos. The difference between these two types of activities is that the first ones, the profoundly important ones, the ones we need to be absolutely sure we don’t miss, have their own specific time set aside for them. The second group, the ones that are nice to get done but not crucial in any way, get done “whenever”.

Which group does your writing belong in?

Even if your time is relatively unstructured, make sure to schedule fixed times for writing every day. If your schedule is already complex, this is even more important – it’s far to easy to find yourself too drained after a hard day’s work to put n your writing time. Knowing that 7-9pm is writing time will help keep you from getting distracted. If you have the time and keep writing beyond your scheduled time, that’s fine – but make sure you block off enough time to do your minimum writing throughout the week.

3. Make a sacrifice.

Chances are, your time is already pretty much spoken for, so to fit in any serious writing, something’s going to have to give. Getting up an hour earlier might be in order. Remember that to stay healthy, you’ll need to get to sleep earlier too, so this is a serious lifestyle change (hence the sacrifice) – but many writers fid that the quiet time before their day gets under way is a more productive time than the last tired hour before they go to bed.

Another sacrifice to consider is giving up an hour or two of television each night. Given the state of TV these days, that might not be much of a sacrifice! Or you might give up part of your lunch hour, a weekly visit to the spa, or your morning newspaper ritual.

There’s something more to this than just making time, though. Making some kind of sacrifice reinforces the importance of your writing. What’s more, discovering that what you’ve given up pales in comparison to the writing you’ve accomplished puts you one step closer to embracing your identity as a writer.

4. Write an outline.

I know: BOR-iiiing! Shades of high school all over, right?

Get over it.

While there are a handful of prolific writers who don’t outline (not formally, anyway – many still map out their writing in their heads), the more pressure you’re under to write lots, the more some kind of planning will help.

Outlining exists at two levels. The first is project outlining, laying out the course of your project from start to finish – usually chapter-by-chapter (for works long enough to have chapters, anyway) with subheads and main points for each chapter. The second is session outlining, putting down what you plan to write about in each session of writing. As a general rule, any time you sit down to write, it’s a good idea to lay out a few basic points, milestones you intend to hit in your days writing. Likewise, if you’re brainstorming – or an idea just comes to you out of the blue – write down a couple of main points when you write down each idea.

5. Capture everything.

When you’re writing all the time, you need ideas – all the time. Ideally, when you sit down to write, you’ll just need to record and structure the ideas that you’ve already worked through over the course of the day. The lass time you spend thinking of what to write, the more time you can spend during your allotted writing time just writing.

That’s why capturing ideas when they occur, wherever they occur, is so important. Carry a notebook, and use it. Adopt a ubiquitous capture strategy and live by it. Do as much of that work as possible before you start your writing session, the better – and the less likely you are to spend your precious writing time trying desperately to think of something to write.

6. Park downhill.

Always leave off writing when you have at least one more thing to say. Writing is weird – most of the time, it takes a ton of effort to get started, but once we’re writing, the words just come. Minimize the effort you need to reach “escape velocity” by setting yourself up to have something to say the moment you sit down. By the time you finish writing what you sat down already prepared to write, you’ll have built up the momentum to carry you into the next thought.

7. Condition yourself to write.

If at all possible, set aside a place for writing, ideally only for writing. Every time you sit down in that place, write something. Before long, your mind will come to associate the place itself with the act of writing, so that sitting down will trigger the urge to write.

Some writers create little rituals they perform before or as they write. Again, if you have a set of steps you go through before you write, going through those steps can help trigger your mind to write. The idea is to create self-reinforcing associations – connections between certain places, times, or acts that help shift you into the writing mindset.

For more tips on hitting your writing goals every day, be sure to read the interviews I’ll be posting throughout the month with writers who have done NaNoWriMo before – not all of them have “won”, but all of them have developed their own strategies for getting to “done” in their writing. And please let us know your techniques in the comments!

If you don’t set goals, you won’t achieve them.

There are a lot of reasons people don’t set clear goals. Most of them boil down to a fear of commitment – and of letting ourselves down when we fail to live up to that commitment. Saying “I’m going to finish my novel” sets us up for failure. What if I don’t have any ideas? What if some life crisis happens and I can’t finish? What if, like the main character in Wonder Boys, I have too many ideas, and it just keeps growing and growing and growing…? What if something better comes along?

And on and on. We have a million ways of talking ourselves out of committing to achievement. So we avoid the commitment. We keep our options open. We dally.

As anyone who’s ever been in a romantic relationship without commitment knows, this is a recipe for disaster. In fact, it’s a pretty good analogy, because an author’s relationship with a work in progress is a lot like your relationship with your significant other. You have to work at it every day, and nurture it, and accept its quirks and even failures. And if you lack real commitment, sooner or later, one or the other of you will flake out.

SMART goals are easier to achieve than dumb ones

One reason goal-setting is so daunting is because we don’t know how to set good goals. We set vague, unspecified, open-ended goals – goals with precisely the same faults we mercilessly strike from our writing. “Someday”, “eventually”, “when inspiration strikes”, “as the Muses allow” – these words and phrases need to be banished from your goal-setting vocabulary. What you need are crisp, clear, specific goals.

SMART goals.

The idea of the SMART goal was conceived by a business psychologist named George Doran. SMART is an acronym, standing for goals that are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant, and
• Time-bound.

Let’s look at these elements one by one.

A bad goal – but the kind we are most comfortable committing to – is something like “Write more.”

That’s a dumb goal – more than what? How will you know if you’re writing more? How much more? When should you write more – tomorrow? next week? someday?

A SMART goal would be “Write 1,000 words a day every weekday between now and September 15th.” You know when to start — “now” – and you can easily track your progress – just write down daily word counts. If they’re less than a thousand, don’t stop writing that day!

Here’s another dumb goal: get novel published. It’s too big, too unspecific – it doesn’t suggest any action. Every day, you’ll say to yourself, “Oh, right. I really oughtta get that novel published!” and then go back to surfing the Internet, watching TV, or playing Wii.

Instead, set a series of SMART goals:

• Write a proposal for my novel by July 30th.
• Identify 10 likely agents for my novel by August 7th.
• Send copies of proposal to 10 agents by August 15th.

Even that might not be granular enough – maybe you’re not prepared to write the proposal (it’s not achievable). Maybe you need to:

• Research how to write a book proposal by July 20th.
• Brainstorm 20 promotional ideas for book by July 22nd.
• Identify 20 magazines that would be likely to review my novel by July 25th.

Of course, I’ve taken for granted that publishing your novel is relevant to you, and if you’re a writer, it probably is. But you have to think about whether a goal is relevant, and how, every time, or you won’t have the necessary motivation to complete the goal. It’s boring researching competitor’s books for a book proposal – but if you want to publish that novel, then doing the legwork becomes incredibly relevant.

Make sure you have some way of keeping track of your goals. For daily writing goals and the like, I like the idea of keeping a white board by your desk and writing daily word counts after every writing session. But a notebook, diary, computer file, or anything else will work fine. Maybe you can start a “goal diary” – a nice-looking notebook that you can write goals in, one per page, and track progress in as needed.

Whatever you decide to use, make sure you keep on top of it. Accountability, even just to yourself, is key – both so you can feel good about your project (especially in the middle of a big project that seems like it will never end) and so you can identify hangups and other problems that are keeping you from accomplishing your goals.