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.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

I can just write things without preamble, but the writing flows better and faster if I ease into it for a while first. Usually, I will start by reading things I've written earlier, maybe do a few changes or just corrections. Then start writing for real once I feel in the zone, and try to stay there.

This wasn't always the case to this degree. I can't say for sure, but I think it has to do with my mind not being quite back up to speed after a long time being severely depressed and mentally limited also by anti-depressant side effects. Possibly also just being out of practice with intense mental exertion due to my illness being very long.

When I do get going, I write pretty fast though, usually. I seem to be the type to spend a lot of time thinking about a story/scene beforehand, without truly planning things out in detail, and then just bang it all out quickly once I sit down. It does present a problem though, as I would prefer to keep my writing to myself IRL, and currently don't live alone. Interruptions are plentiful and quite 'show-stopping' at times.

 

[GemmaGemmaGemma]

I haven't tried this before but might give it a go at some point. I can write pretty quickly when I am in the zone, but often spend too long trying to clean up every single paragraph before moving onto the next. That takes up too much time so I don't get enough done. I need to trust myself to clean up the errors and reword messy sections during the proofreading instead.

 

[MiaBabe23]

I’ve not really tried sprints as you’re describing them, but it sounds a great idea - especially for writing more freely without the inner-editor hectoring away
Mixing approaches works best for me, so I think I’ll give this a go too!

 

[CalBishForNow]

Yeah, now and then. A half-hour or hour is around my limit and I can get around 1200 words an hour in that time, give or take a few. It feels kind of weird to call a 30-60 minute period a sprint, but language is imprecise like that. Less than that isn't worth it, more than that isn't easy to fit into the day.

Maybe I'm still editing too much, though. That's a fraction of my WPM when doing a typing test. I don't use sprints to get through writer's block so much as to get words on the page when I've let myself get distracted too much. When I've been regretting how much time I've spent on other hobbies or doomscrolling Facebook or commenting on forums like, well, this when I could have been writing, I set a timer and call it a "sprint". When I have writer's block, I write another part of the story or do something else entirely.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think after a long period of being very prolific I've reached that point where I have no issue taking it as it comes.

That and my ADHD is getting worse and I'm refusing medication because as long as I can manage to get by without it, I will.

There are no deadlines at this point, the story happens when it happens.

Having said that, I'm all about people finding things to push themselves and have goals, get some fire going and keep focus It's a good exercise, just not for me these days.

I'm tired.