Two tricks to write fiction faster

 How to write faster: Two hacks or tricks to try

ONE—One thing you can do to write faster is make sure when you're at the end your writing session—whether you're stopping for lunch, errands, a ten minute phone call OR for the day—is that a few minutes and write a note to yourself about where you will pick up when you get back to your computer. What's next? Figure it out. And when you figure it out, write it down. You will start the next writing session so-so much faster. No starring at the blank page. You'll know where to go. Go.

TWO—About that getting more words on the page in a short amount of time...If you're like me you fool yourself.  "I wrote for two hours or three hours or four hours today," I might declare to my wife. Right. I wrote but I also checked my email three times and made coffee twice and did a little research I needed to get into the characters and looked something up and listened to a song on Youtube that I'd been wanting to listen to and read an article and played with a dog. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. It's so easy to get distracted.

So I tried writing down how many words I wrote in a day to keep me honest. That did help a little but I still messed around a lot. I knew I still wasn't doing as many words in a writing session as I should. Many writers, from Joyce Carol Oates to Brandon Sanderson, prolific writers, talk about focus and being able to get into the flow and concentration. I had my moments but the truth was I still allowed myself to mess around too much.

One simple action has cured me. It's INCREASED MY OUTPUT by about 3X. I write down how many words I write in an hour. I take a break between hours if I get to write for several hours (using #1 to keep me in the flow). Every time I want to check my email or whatever distraction I can come up with to avoid writing, I think about how I only have an hour to get out a certain # of words. I make a goal. Right now it's 800 words an hour. It's a small enough time I can keep my flow going and not want to break it by following a distraction. I'm kind of goal oriented so I don't want to fail to reach my goal. If write for three hours, actually write, you can see I'll have somewhere around 2400 words. For me that's a  good day. If I happen to have a five hour day...that's a really excellent day.

Hope this helps.