How to Use Writing Sprints
Has there ever been a period of time where humanity didn’t feel like they were constantly busy? Almost all modern convinces have been marketed as making a task easier, making life easier, and/or freeing up time for us. Yet, despite all these modern convinces, we are still busy and we still have no time.
Most writers have a full time job and responsibilities outside of that and there are a lot of writers who feel like they don’t have time to write. I know because I’ve been there. If you’ve been around here (or my Instagram) for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me talk about writing sprints. Writing sprints have been my method for writing for years. It is how I was able to write three books while working full time, attending college online, being a mom, and handling life. During 2020 when I wrote Chasing Normal I used writing sprints to give myself focused writing time because I was busy filling up the time with other projects and things. (Turns out, telling an extrovert they cannot leave the house really makes it hard to be creative.)
What are writing sprints? Writing sprints is dedicating a specified amount of time, like twenty to thirty minutes, where you solely focus on writing. You set a timer. I have used my Alexa, my phone, or even an old-fashioned hourglass for timers. Thanks to the popularity of the Pomodoro Method, there are even timer cubes you can find with varying time blocks. I also really like the Forest App so that I stop myself from using my phone. In the forest app you set timers to grow little trees and if you look at your phone, the tree dies. I refuse to have dead trees in my little virtual forest. (It also has a chrome extension.) (Use my code 36Q4KWUSG to get 500 coins to buy more tree types!) Using the app also helps plant trees in the real world. So set whatever timers you want and erase distractions. Then, you start writing. You have the blank document open and you write. Then you keep writing until the timer stops. You don’t open up other windows, you don’t go to other webpages, you don’t do anything but write for the time you set for the sprint. This is why we are not setting timers for sixty minutes, the point is to do this in short bursts of focused time in order to get words on the page.
Writing sprints are particularity helpful when you are super busy but want to start writing. I don’t know where the idea comes from, but I know I used to believe it— I used to believe that in order to be a writer you needed half a day to write. You needed a full-time job type of hours in order to write. It lead me to believe that I couldn’t write unless I was giving up my job and responsibilities to actually be a writer.
Thankfully, that is not the case. I just had a misunderstanding of writing. Turns out, looking at full-time authors and getting their scheduling tips wasn’t helpful for me. I was living very different lives than the authors I was following. It wasn’t until I heard a podcast where a guest talked about “micro-writing.” The guest found himself in a position where he would have an hour-ish commute to and from work every day by train. He realized he could use that time to write and slowly but surely, writing during his commute created consistency and led him to get further in his writing. He was able to finish and edit a book! It was that podcast that led me to believe that figuring out a shorter time frame for writing, but writing more frequently with those shorter periods was going to be more beneficial than waiting until I could devote large chunks of time to writing.
For me, devoting large chunks of time to writing required me to give up something. I understand priorities but if I devoted four hours to writing on a Saturday to writing, that meant I was giving up four hours of spending time with my family. Weekends are usually when we get to spend the most time together so it wasn’t a trade off I was willing to make. My family comes before writing. So I was following what I believed, I was following my priorities, but I still couldn’t fit in writing.
Thanks to that podcast, the idea of micro-writing, and realizing that I could find thirty minute time frames within my busy schedule, I finally got started writing.
Seriously, if you have time to scroll social media, you have time to write. If you have time to watch Netflix, you have time to write. If you have time for reading, you have time for writing. Plus, when you start to practice using writing sprints frequently, you end up training yourself to really focus your writing to that time frame and you can end up getting some big word counts in those thirty minutes. My best sprint had about 1,600-ish words, I think. Even if you only got 800 words, 800 is better than waiting for a longer chunk of writing time to open up in your schedule.
The most important thing, is that you need to be writing during the time set for the sprint. Even if the words are hard, write anyway. You can edit terrible writing. You cannot edit writing that doesn’t exist.