Wow, is this week’s topic timely: writing partners and accountability buddies. We’re not talking about collaborators, authors you write with on the same projects, but the writing buddy!
I’d been struggling to get back into writing mode. You know, the zone where you go every day because you’ve trained your brain to know when writing time happens.
I’ve had it before. Loved it. Used it. But I lost it.
What made me use it was a mental block. Oh how I wish it’d been more along the lines of block party. But I had a mental block that I needed to deal with. So, I did.
Healthy Mind = Healthy Body
I focused on my health along with working on my mind. Meditation and yoga are things that work incredibly well with me. And when I fall off, travel usually bungles up my routine, I definitely notice both in my mental acuity and physical aches and pains.
Once I was feeling good and confident in my writing again…I’d lost my writing mode. Until a month ago when a writer friend reached out and asked if I would be interested in doing writing sprints together. I’ve heard of other people doing this, Jeffe mentioned it yesterday, but I’d never written with anyone before and wasn’t sure how it would work.
Writing Sprints: we meet on Facebook video, mute ourselves, and write for 15 minute increments. We check in, stretch if needed, and go right back to writing. We’ll do this for a few hours, or until Ullr the husky pup decides it’s walk-time and then we take a lunch break. We do 15 minutes because it’s a short enough time that our brain’s can easily maintain focus. We have done half hour sprints, which also work well.
This works well for both of us because we had a tendency to edit as we wrote our first drafts. Let me tell you, this does not work! I’d been creeping along in my manuscript. A hundred words here. A couple hundred there. With way too many days in-between. I keep a word-count spreadsheet and the day I started doing writing sprints with my friend my daily count skyrocketed. Now I’m able to average 1500 words in 4 hours.
Now, writing is like lifting weights. You can’t compare yourself to others. You do the best that you can do and work on improving your skills and abilities. You may look at my average word count and laugh or it may make your jaw drop. Either way, I share it because I used to average 100 words in 2 hours. Writing sprints for the win!
Having a writing buddy has clearly made all the difference for me. And for me, the goal of the writing sprint is to write. No looking back, no editing. Just getting the words down, first draft style. Because you know what they say—you can’t edit a blank page. And I think it’s partly accountability, and partly having someone there that understands what I’m going through and working towards.
Hopefully you have someone in your life that supports your writing goals. But it’s highly likely that they aren’t a writer and therefore don’t understand it. Only another writer knows how mentally draining it is to write for hours. Only another writer can share the misery of rejections and/or bad reviews. Only another writer knows how sweet it is to receive a yes or a yellow banner or a 5 star review. Writing is a lonely occupation, but we don’t have to be alone to do it.
Side note to writing-sprints first drafts - If I hit a spot that needs research, or a name I don’t have yet, or anything that I’ll need to come back to I enter [] and keep typing. You can use whatever code word or character you want, it’s a placeholder you can search for and fill in the blanks later.
So, have you ever been part of a writing group? Do you have a writing buddy? If you haven’t ever given it a try, I urge you to. It might just be the key to unlocking huge word potential.
