I read an article through Writer’s Edit (@WritersEdit) yesterday about writing a novel in only thirty minutes a day (Read the article here). There were a lot of details, but it basically boiled down to setting time aside sans distractions where all you do is write. No planning. No editing. No going back. No Facebook. No Twitter. No TV. Usually no music. Nothing but the prose.
It was an interesting idea. I mulled it over all day and decided to try it out last night. After the family went to bed, I went into my office, put my phone on silent, closed my web browser (I prefer Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 #fanboy), and went to work. I focused on writing in a stream-of-consciousness manner by not stopping typing unless I did not have the very next word. I let my mind open and whatever hit the keyboard stayed.
The experiment was a singing success. In 30 minutes I wrote 1,350. I rarely write that much that fast. That averages 45 words per minute which was a nice average for me. I hoped for more, but without having practiced my typing speed in decades, 45 wpm is not anything to sneeze at. My first novel (as yet unpublished) clocked in at just shy of 105,000 words. If the second book is around the same length, the pace I set last night would see it being finished in 45 days considering how much I have already written. It is pretty exciting to think that in six weeks, I could have the first draft of my second novel finished. If I were to add in some planning, I could be done by the end of November.
Fortunately, that coincides with NaNoWriMo (@NaNoWriMo). For the last several years, I have wanted to participate and succeed at National Novel Writing Month. This could well be my chance. I am going to spend some time polishing my planning for #bk2 so that when November 1 hits, I can hit the ground running. I do not think it would be fair to drop in previous writing copy/paste style so I am going to slow down a bit and get as many ducks in a row as I can before I jump into NaNoWriMo. I’m getting more excited about my writing than I was when I was editing the first book. It is fun to create.