Sometimes It's a Sprint
/Yeah, conventional wisdom says that this whole publishing thing is a marathon and not a sprint. But when you’re actually writing books, sprinting can be a big help.
Anyone who has done NaNoWriMo has probably done sprints. You might also have heard of this referred to as the Pomodoro Technique. This technique is designed to help you shut out distractions and get work done in short bursts of productivity. I found this especially helpful when my kids were younger. I had to cram my writing time into naptime, after bedtime, and between getting snacks. I started with 25 minute blocks, but you can start with 15 minutes, and expand as you get more productive or carve more writing time out of your schedule.
Of course, I cut my professional teeth in the corporate world of metrics and constant process improvement. I have an almost compulsive need to know how effective my sprints are. So, I track how many words I write in each sprint, and how long that sprint is. You might be thinking, ‘Wow. Meredith, that sounds borderline obsessive.’ But hear me out. If I’m tracking the productivity of my sprints, and then I think about the conditions during that sprint, I can better plan for productivity. I can figure out the best writing location by correlating where I was during my most productive sprints. I can also learn which music helps me focus best, or even which font (Yes, that can affect how productive I am.) How was I feeling on those super productive days? Did exercise before writing? How much coffee did I have that day? Was I at home, or at one of my public writing spots? There are so many factors that can affect creativity and paying attention to those things helps make me more productive.
I used to keep track of these sprints on my planner pages, but most planners don’t provide room for that. And I want to be able to review my sprints without having to filter through my old appointments and to do lists. So, I made some pages that will record the information I want when tracking my sprints and put them into a Writing Sprint Tracker.
Building Blocks
Anyone who has ever managed a project can tell you that to meet your project goal, you first start by breaking the project down into smaller goals. Writing a book is no different. This is why I outline. Writing sprints are the smallest of the building blocks toward reaching your goal of a completed book.
You start with your overall word goal for your book. Conventional wisdom in the publishing industry can give you some ideal word counts for the genre that you might be writing in. Then you’ll want to break your project into manageable chunks. You can do that using acts like a play, or larger topics within your work if you’re writing non-fiction. Then you’ll want to subdivide those larger chunks into smaller blocks. If you’ve read my post about my pre-writing process, you’ll know that I’m a fan of the Save the Cat beat sheets for providing a framework.
