Look, most writing and style guides make it out that you gotta reach some quota daily to complete an 80,000 word minimum novel for publication. What they don't know is something I could sell for a few bucks a download, but I'm willing to give to you for free: how to write like a ninja. A ninja? Those fabled high-ranking spies of feudal Japan? I know you're thinking: "I can't even write a hundred words a minute, how can I write like a ninja!" Well, that's the sort of questions I've had from many friends that wanted to start writing, and most don't realize it's not how much you write, nor what you write, it's why and where you write that gives you the beginning skills of writing quickly and deadly as a ninja.
So here's the first step:
Most people can now use their thumbs to write thirty-or-more words per minute via texting. Some phones/tablets are so well developed for texting, they practically write the words for you with autocorrect. Granteed, it's not perfect, as touching a screen is far less accurate than punching keys, but this is also a great way to write sporadically throughout a work day. Say you work an eight hour work day, like at an office where you have to use the company's computer and stare blankly into a screen for multiple intervals throughout the day. Texting is considered a part of life these days, and certainly never frowned upon, as nearly everyone does it to keep in tough with co-workers, kids, family, etc. so as you go about your day, take just five minutes out of every hour to jot down a paragraph. That's about three-to-six sentences on average. It sounds like a pain-in-the-ass at first, but you'll be surprised just how much you can write in such short spurts. You can even use the timer on your phone to make sure you don't go over, and even if in mid-sentence, you stop, and wait for the next hour to come by, and immediately pick up where your last sentence left off. Most people will excuse five measly minutes out of an hour, and you may even find yourself becoming more productive from this scheduling. Many people have made testimonies of minature schedules thrown into their daily routine helping build up a sense of confidence, and even help increase productivity. Another great point of doing this is that in an eight hour day, if you type a paragraph or two for every five minutes ( your typing skils will increase over time as you get used to the process) that means forty minutes will be spent a day typing, without even touching your work after office hours, that's two-hundred minutes of typing in a fiscal week. If you type 20 words a minutes (100 words per hour) that's twenty thousand words a week! Within a month, if you take weekends off, you will have 80,000 words, the golden number for most mainstream publications. So within one month, on your phone, you'll have written a full-length novel, perhaps even faster depending on your sustainability, and texting speed.
Now every night, you'll want to save your progress to a computer, laptop, or other device, so your progress can be stored elsewhere than the phone. I know you could use a blog to save your progress, and even access it through different platforms, but the point of this exercise is sporadic, ninja-style writing, and a blog can get overly complicated, even on a phone. It's best to just write it in notepad, or even in an e-mail to yourself, but I recommend the notepad application for more dexterity, and less distractions from incoming mail.
Now I've been told the worst time to try and feel inspiration is during school semesters. Okay, this is a tricky one, because whether you're going through high school, college, or graduate school, it's probably the worst time to think: I'm going to write a novel! It may even sound laughable to think you could write something as minuscule as a proper poem during this time, but it is possible! Yes, even after cramming for tests, and writing your thesis, it is possible to write for your own creative purposes,,and you don't even have to take creative writing to force the point home!
Soow he I was in college, I had the brilliant idea to do nearly nineteen credits every semester, excluding the first of course, and you can imagine trying to balance that with writing. The truth is, I didn't write very much during the years I was at college, and most people were surprised I was able to even get a few short stories done. I found it rather difficult to sit down and concentrate. At the time I was thinkingmof finishing the third book in a series I held very dear, and is an important trilogy to this blog. Still, I found it floundering with the little bit of time I felt motivated to dedicate to it, until nearly scraping thirty pages for starting over from scratch.
Yet, I discovered I was just writing wrong, and I needed to learn how to focus my efforts on writing for me, and thwt was nearly impossible in a very social atmosphere as college, and having to balance work, class, and other social aspects there are nearly expected of you,and I discovered it was easier to just write whenever inspiration hit me. I was barely inspired to read books outside my required reading. I love reading,by-the-way, so to lose interest in what I wanted to read, was very different to how I normally felt. Still, I learned to write when I could, but most important, to write when I felt inspired to, and that was extremely rare after doing a ten-page report on a topic that wasn't even deserving of three pages.
Now common sense is best used with your five minutes: if say the phone rings, or something comes up,you obviously stop writing, and go about your business, and find five minutes later in that hour to work. There really is a great deal of zen and balancing to have this properly work out, and in theory, it shouldn't be an issues, but if you know your limits, I'd even half the time to two-and-a-half minutes per session per hour.
Let's say texting isn't an option, let's say you have one of those jobs where it simply is impossible to get a second on your phone....how can you write then? Tricky, but not impossible. I've had the luxury of having jobs that the honest working man would call I humane, and wt the end of the day,typing was the last thing I've wanted to do,mbut I am a writer, and so I knew I had to stay fresh. I once worked as a custodian, the fancy soft language for janitor, and I was on my feet to the pint thwt I had blisters peeling away like onion layers. Sorry for the visuals, but the point was I would get up at times of four I. The morning, and get home almost nine at night, and I did this for probably the. Shorty of my working career. I also wrote out two full-length manuscripts during this time. So how did I do it? Simple, I did very, very little writing during the week, crammed a ton in during the weekend, and made sure I was still sane enough to get up the following work week and kick ass.
Truth-be-told, I feel if you love something greatly enough, you'll do whatever you can doaccomplish that desire. I love to write, I've found creative writing, nonfiction writing,and even poetry to be ample ways to express. Use of over the years. Without this method that I'm about to share with you, I'd have stopped years before:
So you work nearly twenty hours a day, pretty much sleep at your job and go right back into the dirt with barely a humane amount of sleep. You know you're a writer, hell, your life is a damn novel all itself! So how do you find the condience of typing even a sentence a day on an honest-living job site? Easy, you don't! You don't have the reward to equal the risk of losing your position, because it is a tough place to work, and do a tuning but, so you're going to have to rough it after hours, like I had to for years. How? There's not enough caffeine in the world to even stay awake for the computer to boot up, let-alone take a pen to paper, and even so, why waste time on pad writing if it's more viable to write on a screen? I concur, so here's the trick for you hard working people who have but seconds to yourself a week.
Weekends are usually work as well, you don't get weekends off, face-it, you're lucky to get a day off in a hundred hour week, with barely minimum wage for your efforts. To write under these conditions,mas I had to at one point, you need to be vigilant. Perhaps a book is not going to be the first thing you write. You may have to stick with a thick-layered short story, and publish via magazines and anthologies. These are everywhere online, or you can by a paperback copy of an old Writer's Market, but seeing as that publication has gone downhill over the past decade, I'd say the last best copy I ever had was 2008, the 2014 one I traded it for was so bad, I almost wanted to buy back the old one!
Short stories are great: they require you to only write several thousand words, about five-to-ten pages per time, and you can really just map it out within a few minutes, and develop your story over the course of several weeks. Taking ten minutes a night, even right before bed I felt was helpful, and mapping out your story allows for you to rigidly organize your goals within a few minutes per night. Thwt means once you've completely outlined your short story, usually doing it beginning, middle, end, resolution, you can know exactly what you need to write next, and jump right into it for several minutes a night, then voila! You have a full-fledge short story for potential publication, and several of these published will give you an excellent portfolio for future projects.
But wait! You want to know how I wrote a full-length novel, twice! Under such conditions. It wasn't easy, and seeing as the fastest I've ever written a novel was in 13 days, it took me well over eight months to write the first, and a year to write the second under those circumstances. Also,mi was a bit younger back then, so I had more energy and motivation to get stuff cranking out, but it was also another very interesting method thwt is a bit playing with fire.
I would rest type, which is a connotation I put to the method of typing with my eyes closed, some nice music playing in my headphones, and my legs propped up in a recliner, with the laptop balanced on my legs. The trick is thwt the average person can sit with their eyes closed for about fifteen. I jets before they fall asleep. You will begin to feel drowsy after a certain amount of time typing,and thwt is when you call it a night. So measure it out to three-to-four songs, and after the last song on your headphones has played, no matter where you are, you stop typing, immediately pack up, and you go to bed. This method got me through a 120,000 word novel in about five months, and I have to say, it was incredible to see the results.
The trick is to pick out songs that make you feel relaxed, and I know it sounds corny, but she you're in a good mood, your writing will also be slightly better than if you wrote in a shitty mood. This process is great for the 12-hour shift worker, because it doesn't feel like work when you get home, it's almost therapeutic writing, and thus, feels more rejuvenating than maddening. Writing is work, but it should feel natural, fun, and be fundamentally different than other hobbies/advocations. So if you do wsnt to write a full-length novel, I find this method works wonders if you only have so many minutes to yourself within a twenty-four hour period. And obviously, you can use this method to also write short stories as well.
In conclusion, these methods are but a few in the arsenal of one who wants to write like a ninja, especially in time management. I will be doing more of these posts in the future in-terms of writing methods,organization,many further details on how to find that muse in a New York minute. Expect to see more of these posts over the course of the next few months, if-not the next few seasons, as there are a million ways to write fast, but only a select few to write fast, write well, and which of those will work best for you, and your particular schedule.
Writing methods measure up to what is important for you as a writer,what accomplishments you tend to desire,,and trying to reach said accomplishments before the invisible buzzer goes off, and you've either met your quota, or failed. Most writers aren't average joes anymore. They're not just some guy who gets up, goes to work, and heads back onto the computer to do a bit more writing after busting their hump all day. Today's writer is a speedy, sporadic, hyperactive bunch of writers thwt type slmost every single day, and upda more times than most writers of the past,however the end product is usually not as well-rounded as before. The heads up in the age of ever a. Writing,min-that most true writers are of the elite, and writer several blog posts a day,and update thesmelves beyond just having a discussion of what they ate, it's hard to imagine just where they could go with their writing skills. Most write online for blogs,magazines,newspapers,even start-ups. Many do-so to land bigger jobs down the line, many eventually start their own business that will may even be successful, of falter; then it's back to square one.
Thank you for reading the Malacast Editorial!
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