Furry Writers' Guild Forum

The art of burst: writing in 20 minute bursts.

General Writing Discussion
#1

Let me tell you a story. A story about a writer that was struggling to reach a minimum words per day. This writer struggled to get 500 words per day despite being able to write well beyond that. This writer had many struggles with family and lack of privacy.

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Does this sound like a normal day of writing? I’ve had issues of not being able to write. I have plenty to right but stress has zapped my focus.

Today I started out by setting a timer for 20 minutes. I focused only on writing and I got 200 words out every burst I did. It helped me reach 900 words today and I could have done more if I could get more focus. I ask everyone to try this method out if your focus is gone.

#2

I truly can’t work in bursts. I need about an hour to get going. Anything under two hours would just be me “jotting down ideas”.

#3

This has been working for me lately when little else has. It keeps me off Twitter, at least (mostly).

#4

There’s actually a site linked though the Guild’s Slack were a few of us would get together here and there to sprint. The idea is 25 minutes of timed writing at the top and bottom of every hour. When I plan to sprint, I’ll post in the #sprints channel and the #general-chat.

Always a fun and motivating way to write with others.

#5

I sometimes do 20 minute bursts and then do a word count and then do another 20 minutes and try to beat the word count of the previous 20 minutes. It makes it a bit more interesting when you make a game out of it.

#6

The breaks inbetween help your brain relax and process inbetween.

Lately I just have access to a laptop so I’ve been typing up in open office. I’ve practically doubled my word count on days I write. 2k every other day opposed to 1k daily so… It’s still the same rate but if I wrote everyday I’d be double my proficiency.

Also. Word and open office have given me two different word counts for the same document. I find this very odd.

#7

Different rules about hyphenated words, maybe?

#8

Sometimes a burst will pop in there, and always about random things or they’ll end up being the rough sketch to the full story I want to write. I keep my notebook handy for such things, filling the pages with a lot bursts that will mean something later on.

#9

I rarely use hyphenated words. It’s normally 200 to 300 word difference. Which means some special characters may be added that shouldn’t be there.

#10

Ugh, I try to work in bursts, but I find I can’t. If I can’t devote at least an hour to writing, than “zoning in” takes too much time and effort. The disjointed writing that follows often gets deleted as well, making that 20 or so minutes fairly useless to me.