Does anyone else do "writing sprints"?

[ColtonWrites]

I picked up the habit doing NaNoWriMo over the years. You set a timer and write as fast as you can for a short period of time - most popular is 15 minutes, but people do anything from 5-30 min (or longer, but at that point I feel like it stops being a "sprint" and just starts being a productive writing session.) Then you count the number of words you did in that session, and compete against your personal best/other writers if you are lucky enough to have writing friends who like to sprint too.

I use them when I get stuck on a story. Interesting things happen when I say "okay, well, brain, you'd better come up with SOMETHING cause I'm measuring you."

Like just now, I thought I didn't know how to start the next chapter of my current novel, so I picked a scene idea at random and just forced it.

Turned into a pretty decent opener of the main character giving himself a stick-and-poke tattoo commemorating a friend he left behind.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Nope - not me, I’m afraid.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

It's my default. I find it much easier to write with a clock ticking down than without. I also happen to write faster and the results are better than without. There is less hesitation, and it's noticeable in my prose.

I usually do 10 to 20 minutes, but 10 is my default. Due to my ADHD, I sometimes extend the timer, go beyond the first tick, or keep rebooting it because I got hyperfocused, so I keep on going and going and going... Days 1, 8, and 27 for NaNoWriMo were notorious for that. On a sidenote, this was also the first time in which my project won every single badge on the site.

This year I ended up on the 27th, with 57202 words in total for a full first draft, with a total of 1545 minutes spent. My average session lasted for 57.22 minutes, and each session landed an average of 2118.59 words total. No missed days.

 

[ColtonWrites]

It's my default. I find it much easier to write with a clock ticking down than without. I also happen to write faster and the results are better than without. There is less hesitation, and it noticeable in my prose.

I usually do 10 to 20 minutes, but 10 is my default. Due to my ADHD, I sometimes extend the timer, go beyond the first tick, or keep rebooting it because I got hyperfocused, so I keep on going and going and going... Days 1, 8, and 27 for NaNoWriMo were notorious for that. On a sidenote, this was also the first time in which my project won every single badge on the site.

This year I ended up on the 27th, with 57202 words in total for a full first draft, with a total of 1545 minutes spent. My average session lasted for 57.22 minutes, and each session landed an average of 2118.59 words total. No missed days.

That's fantastic.
I managed around 80k for November but it's not a true "NaNo win" because it's spread across about 6 different projects that all ended up/are still under 20k. The current one I'm working on will probably break 50k when it's done, but that's definitely not happening in the next 36 hours.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Yes. I'm less inclined to stray from my current story (ADHD) if I can find a way to work on a second story outside of my normal writing times. It scratches that creative itch I get occasionally when a new idea pops up.

So I write during about 40 minutes of my lunch hour with a Bluetooth keyboard and my phone on Google docs.

No corrections, bare minimum of punctuation, as near as I can get to stream of consciousness writing. I'll do this for about two weeks on the same side project then start a new one.

About half of what I do, I end up discarding. The rest gets character and setting development in my notebook in the hopes it becomes a story in the future.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Not sprints, because my typing speed is constant on my most used device (an android tablet with a small screen keyboard), but I'll often grab an hour when I can (usually in the mornings or in the evenings), and knock out 500 - 600 words. I'm always stream of consciousness, so it seems to work fairly well. I've written this way for a decade - I can type faster on a keyboard, but then I've got the, "Don't want partner to know" issue.

 

[designatedvictim]

I picked up the habit doing NaNoWriMo over the years. You set a timer and write as fast as you can for a short period of time - most popular is 15 minutes, but people do anything from 5-30 min (or longer, but at that point I feel like it stops being a "sprint" and just starts being a productive writing session.) Then you count the number of words you did in that session, and compete against your personal best/other writers if you are lucky enough to have writing friends who like to sprint too.

I use them when I get stuck on a story. Interesting things happen when I say "okay, well, brain, you'd better come up with SOMETHING cause I'm measuring you."

Like just now, I thought I didn't know how to start the next chapter of my current novel, so I picked a scene idea at random and just forced it.

Turned into a pretty decent opener of the main character giving himself a stick-and-poke tattoo commemorating a friend he left behind.

I'm glad that it's a thing that works for you, but I'd imagine that adding a count-down clock would add one more stress that most people don't need.

 

[iwatchus]

When it's working, I'm kind of the opposite. I have days where I write non-stop from 6AM to 11PM, only with breaks for two meals during the day.I did this for two and a half months when I first started writing (I had to take breaks for teaching classes five days a week. But that would be an hour or so off, than right back to writing. I wrote my Nude Day Event story from raw concept to submitting in five days (it was 27K words and won a prize).

If I can get a good hour of writing, I will often go until forced to stop. That first hour is hir or miss. If I force it, my writing sucks.

 

[designatedvictim]

Like I implied above, I'd probably be one of those who would stress out under a timer.

My current WIP weighs in at about 27.3K (now, 11/29) which started when I decided to expand the heck out of a back-story scene from my last WIP, beginning with a 4K-word seed-scene back on 11/13.

That seed-scene was an extract from the earlier 8K-work WIP I started back on 10/29.

I'd forgotten all about NaNoWriMo (until I saw it mentioned in Kittie's signature this week), so I can't say I did too badly to reach 35K-ish on the month in a 'race' I didn't know I was in.

My issue is that the closer I get to completing things, the tougher I find getting all the puzzle pieces filed off before they can fit together properly.

 

[AchtungNight]

I do such sprints since my stories are often short and predictable. But then I obsess over them a day or two, correcting flaws before I publish.

 

[ColtonWrites]

I do such sprints since my stories are often short and predictable. But then I obsess over them a day or two, correcting flaws before I publish.

Oh for sure! I use sprints to get the words on the page, but it's not publishable stuff, usually. I skip over spelling errors, shove in placeholders for names or details I haven't figured out yet, and sometimes put sentences down in the wrong order. I will often do handwritten sprints, and then correct when I transcribe to the computer.
If I'm feeling particularly obsessive about a piece, I'll write in one color, correct in a different one, and then adjust a third time as I type it up.

Like I implied above, I'd probably be one of those who would stress out under a timer.

I have the kind of ADHD where the only way ANYTHING gets done is with some kind of external pressure. I can trick myself into providing the pressure, sometimes, but the reminder to stay on task helps me. Definitely different strokes for different folks, though.