Last month I signed up for an online writing workshop with the above title. It intrigued me, plus I was going on a one-month holiday so I had the time. It was only a short workshop (an hour or more) and as it turned out, the holiday was dreadful. My husband and I were stuck in a filthy house with insect infestations. We left on the 10th day, and I wouldn’t have stayed that long except he kept saying to just give it a bit more time and see how I felt. Well guess what? The longer we stayed the more I hated it.
But I did have the time to do the short workshop which was a lot of fun, and it was interesting to see just how much I could write in a short period of time.
Naturally, I know about writing quickly because of my book, How to Write an Article in 15 Minutes or Less, including research, proof reading and editing (https://www.cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/15.html). But I still wanted to see if I could learn something new. And because I hadn’t been writing as much as usual at the time, I thought it would ignite my creative spark once again.
The workshop was by Amber Petty and she was fun to work with.
The main part of the workshop was to pick an object that we could see and this would be our writing prompt.
I was sitting on a wooden verandah at the time. My writing implements were on a small table beside my chair. I had a notebook in front of me and my pens and pencils were beside me. I chose a pen as my prompt. We then had to take a couple of minutes to write a list of what the object could be used for.
My list was as follows:
- Write a best seller
- Write a hurtful letter
- Write a will to include or exclude someone
- Write a budget to save money or buy a house
- Write a thesis and get a degree/doctorate
- Write a prescription
We then had to write as the most arrogant writer on earth for five minutes. THAT was a fun bit of role playing.
We then had 10 minutes to write a fast (beginning) draft of a short story, based on our prompt. No editing. That was a firm rule. We weren’t to edit as we wrote. Just to write as fast as we could for 10 minutes.
This is what I wrote (don’t judge me, it was just a bit of fast fun):
Daniel sat down with his pad and pen. His pad was brand new. 250 pages. A4 size. And he’d bought two of them.
He always wanted to write a book. Not just any old book. A best seller. No. Not even that. He wanted to write a mega best seller; one that would be snapped up by a movie company and made into a block buster that everyone would want to see.
Yep. That was his goal. With his pads and pens (he’d bought a pack of 10) he was going to sit down and not stop writing until his book was finished. He knew that many writers preferred to write straight to keyboard but Daniel loved to write by hand. Always had. But he’d never written anything as long as a novel before. Hell, he’d never written a story before in his life. He’d only journaled and written essays. While studying for his degree in history, he’d written many essays, all the while wishing that he was writing a novel instead.
So now he was going to do it. Blank page to best seller.
And that was a far as I got. Exactly 185 words in 10 minutes.
And Amber was right about editing. It was hard not to criticise or try and edit while I wrote. I just kept going, hoping that what I’d written was good even though it didn’t feel like it at the time.
185 words wasn’t bad for 10 minutes of (hand) writing. If I’d kept it up for an hour, it would have been 1,110 words, which is about my usual pace. I always average 1,000 words an hour, as do most writers.
And I loved writing into the dark like that. Not knowing where I was going with the story but writing it anyway. It’s a way I’ve always enjoyed writing short stories, just having a prompt and going wherever the writing took me, so it was no surprise to me that I enjoyed the short writing exercises.
It’s also how I write most of my articles and blog posts. Just an idea and 15 minutes to write. It took a few weeks of practice when I first started, but once I perfected my system of writing, it was easy.
I know there are many who say that writing fast results in writing garbage. But it’s not true. No one reads a book and says it was terrible because the author wrote it quickly. And there are many terrible books out there that the authors laboured over for months and years. The speed of writing has nothing to do with whether your writing is good or bad. Faster writing means that you write authentically without your inner editor criticising you.
In my free eBook, How to Write a Book in 6 Days (you can download this and many other free eBooks at https://www.cheritonhousepublishing.com/free-ebooks.html), it begins with:
“So you wanna write a book.
Not only do you want to write a book, but you want to write it quickly. But is it possible to write a book in only 6 days?
Well they say that anything is possible, and there are other authors who have written not just books, but prize-winning books in less than one week.
Famous entrepreneur Dan Kennedy once wrote a book in only 3 days. Best-selling author Stuart Wilde wrote most of his books in only 2 or 3 days.
Dr Joe Vitale wrote his best-selling book "Turbocharge Your Writing" in only one day.
Sylvester Stallone wrote the script for "Rocky" in just 3 days. And William Saroyan wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning play "The Time of Your Life" in only 6 days.
So you see not only is it possible to write a book in only 6 days, if you're really motivated you could finish it in much less time.
And if your book is good, the income from it can be phenomenal.
When Dr Joe Vitale first published his e-book, "Hypnotic Writing", he sold 100 copies of this $29.95 book in only one hour. Three months later he'd earned a massive $45,000 from this one book alone.
Top copy writer, David Garfinkel, published an e-book called "Killer Copy Tactics" that brought in $35,000 in only 2 months.
So as you can see, not only is it possible to write a book in 6 days, it can also have great income potential.”
So you see, authors have been writing books quickly for years. And they are damn good at it.
And as I learned (and as I know) you can write a nearly 200 words in 15 minutes, if you know what you’re doing, ignore your inner critic, and you’ve had plenty of practice. And as a serious writer, you should already have plenty of writing practice.
Do you know how much you can write in 15 minutes?
If not, try it now. Choose a prompt, set a timer for 15 minutes, start writing and don’t stop till the timer sounds.
And then do it again.
And again.
