Contents

Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Blank Page
Intro
Chapter 1- Micro Sprints
Chapter 2- Tortoise Enclosure
Chapter 3- Track Everything
Chapter 4- Clear The Decks
Chapter 5- Organize Your Scene
Chapter 6- Full Sprints
Chapter 7- Increase Your Speed
Chapter 8- Editing Sprints
Chapter 9- Measuring Progress
Chapter 10- Reward Systems
Chapter 11- Mindset
Where to go from here?
Exercises
About the Author
 5,000 Words Per Hour
A Guide to Writing Faster, Better & Smarter

Chris Fox
Copyright © 2015 Chris Fox
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1512047376
ISBN-13: 978-1512047370
To the Author's Corner. I am amazed daily by your continued support and wisdom.
Intro

If you're holding this book I'm going to go way out on a limb and guess
that you'd like to write faster. I'm totally psychic, right? Normally these
intro chapters give you several pages of boring info about the author.
That's done for two reasons. First, it pads the book and makes it look
longer. Second, it lets me brag about all the wonderful things I've
accomplished. Neither is helpful to your goal of increasing your writing
speed.
I'm going to sum up everything you'll care about that relates to me in
one sentence. I consistently write 4,000 words an hour and sometimes
spike up to 5,000 words an hour, hence the title of this book. I've used this
method to publish three novels in the last nine months, and the last of
those novels was written in 13 days. This book will teach you to do exactly
the same thing.
You're going to learn a simple, organized system with actionable steps.
This system will begin to work immediately and by the end of the very
first chapter you'll already be writing more Words Per Hour than you do
now. Each time you implement another step your speed will increase
again, and you'll get faster as you practice.
This process takes work. It takes consistency, and it takes planning. If
you do the work, though, you will accomplish things that you probably
believe are impossible. How would you like to belt out 4,000 words an
hour for two hours a day, each and every day? Or 5,000 for just one hour
every single day? What would that do for your career as a writer? Wouldn't
it be awesome to finish an entire draft of your novel in less than a month?
Read on and that's exactly what you'll accomplish. If you want to get
started skip to chapter one and let's get rocking!

For those that do want to know about bit about the author

I realize that some of you want to hear my story, to know how I went
from never writing more than two hundred words a day to never less than
three thousand. For those people I'm happy to give my story, which should
make it clear exactly how I developed my system and why it will be easy
for you to adopt.
My story begins back in 2004, which marks the very first time I ever
wrote a story in the flow state. I cranked out 8,000 words in one glorious
day, and that story went on to be published in a magazine called The Rifter.
It was entitled Lord of the Deep, and I still remember the feeling of awe
when a box unexpectedly showed up one day containing 10 copies and a
check for $75.
It was the very first time I'd made real money writing, and it came after
I'd spent a decade writing off and on, trying to learn my craft. I was both
shocked and elated, and decided right there and then to write a novel. I sat
down to do exactly that, but nothing came. Not a single word. I spent hours
staring at the screen, and then I gave up for five years.
There were a lot of reasons for my failure, not the least of which was
that I had no plan. Up to that point I was a pantser, one of those writers
who run heedlessly through a story with no idea where it will carry them.
They write by the seat of their pants, hence the name. Back then I loved
that, because my idol Stephen King wrote exactly the same way.
Unfortunately, I didn't understand just how dangerous writing like that
can be. It leads to occasional bursts of brilliance, but when you are not in
the throes of such a binge words often fail you entirely. I hated that
feeling, and consigned myself to hoping for another burst of clarity where
I'd somehow churn out an amazing novel. It never came, of course.
I discovered the first part of my 5k per hour system completely by
accident in 2009. Two years prior I'd worked in the mortgage industry, and
I saw the crash coming. So I packed my things and left Los Angeles for
Northern California, where I'd gone to high school. I was burnt out from
six years in the rat race and I had my Lester Burnham moment (check out
the movie American Beauty if you don't get the reference). I took the job
with the least amount of responsibility- customer service at a local credit
union.
If a customer called in to get their checking account balance or to move
some money into a CD I was the guy answering the phone. It was mind-
numbing work, but I loved it. Why? Because between phone calls there
were often 1-2 minute gaps, and I started using them for what I call micro-
sprints. I'd hang up the phone with a customer, then instantly tab over to
my Word document and begin typing.
This taught me several valuable lessons without even realizing it. I
never allowed myself to go back and edit, because if you only have 80
seconds to write and you allow yourself to edit you'd only have three
paragraphs at the end of a full day. I found that out the hard way, which is
why I stopped allowing such edits.
When I stopped editing and just let myself write, I quickly found I
could finish a thousand words a day while someone else paid me to do it.
This was a heady experience, because outside of the few bursts of
creativity I'd had in my then fifteen years of intermittent writing I'd never
consistently broken a thousand words a day.
I've always been a numbers guy, so I created a really simple spreadsheet
to track my daily word count. Before long I was hitting 2k a day, and I
sustained that until I'd completed a 180,000 word novel entitled Yuri
Silvertongue & the Violet Spire. That novel will never see the light of day,
because it was terrible. Yet it was still a massive accomplishment, because
in writing it I'd done something that over 90% of writers fail to do. I'd
completed a novel. It didn't matter that the novel was essentially fan
fiction for someone else's pre-existing world. It didn't matter that it was
trite and uneven. I had finally accomplished something I'd previously
believed impossible.
Fast forward five years. I now crank out a minimum of 5,000 words
every single day, and this generally takes me less than an hour and a half. I
can occasionally do it all in a single hour. Yes, you read that correctly. I
can crank out 5,000 words an hour under the right circumstances. That's
over 80 words a minute for a full sixty minutes.
Consider that for a moment. Where would you be in a year if you
consistently cranked out 5,000 words every single day? That's over 1.8
MILLION words. Stick with this program, follow the exercises and you
will get there. The best part? Immediate progress. Today you'll be further
along than you were yesterday. Tomorrow you'll be further than that. You
won't get there immediately. You won't even get there in a month. But
every day you'll be further than you are today, and in a year you will be
achieving things that make your friends and family gawk.
This system is all about incremental improvements. Start small and
dream big.
Chapter 1- Micro Sprints

The writing sprint is the most vital skill you'll gain from this book, and
if you take away nothing else I promise that your writing will forever be
transformed. My first inclination was to make this chapter five, but I
resisted that inclination. Why chapter five? Why not chapter one?
Because there are things you need to know first to make your sprints
effective. Things like tracking your progress, like clearing the decks so
you aren't distracted when a sprint begins. You need to organize your
scene(s) before you start a writing sprint so that you know exactly what it
is you're going to write. It would also be helpful if you knew about voice
dictation, one of the most powerful weapons in a writer's arsenal.
But let's be honest. If I rambled about all of those things before giving
you something useful, something you could apply to your writing right
now, then you'd most likely never read far enough to learn about sprints.
So I'm not going to do that. I'm going to start with the foundation of a
system that will change your writing forever. You'll learn the rest as you
progress through the book.

What is a Writing Sprint?

A writing sprint is, quite simply, a pre-defined length of time where you
will do nothing but write. It has a clearly defined start and end time, and
while you are writing you will do absolutely nothing else. No web surfing.
No answering the phone. No checking email. No going to the bathroom.
All of those things should be handled before your sprint begins (see
Chapter 4- Clearing the Decks for tips on how to do that).
Once a sprint begins your fingers fly across the keyboard until you are
finished. You do not stop. You do not go back and edit. You keep writing
until the buzzer goes off (or until you get your 'Woohoo, sprint complete!'
if you're using the 5KWPH app). It's that simple.

How can Sprints Help You?

 Well duh, you're probably saying. Of course you should be writing for a
set duration, but how harmful can the occasional interruption be?
Catastrophic, that's how harmful. I'm going to go a little geeky on you
with some neuroscience. The goal of a writing sprint is to get you into the
flow state, where your brain will naturally focus on an activity you are
good at to the exclusion of all else.
I'll bet money you've been in this state before. Probably many times,
and probably while you were writing. Have you ever sat down at the
keyboard and the words just flowed? Whole chapters burst out of you and
you were shocked by the rapid progress? Unfortunately if you're like most
people those bursts are unpredictable and painfully elusive.
Writing sprints will help you get into flow state on command. Once
you've harnessed the sprint you'll begin training your brain to enter flow
state on command. This will allow you to crank out far more words than
you ever thought possible. More importantly, those words will be among
the best you've ever written. Not only will you get faster, but you will also
get better.
Have I got your attention? Excellent. How about we try out one of these
sprints?

Sidebar: The 5k Per Hour app

My day job is developing iPhone apps for a San Francisco startup.

Those skills allowed me to create an app to help you utilize the system
you're about to learn. The app will run on an iPad, iPod Touch or an iPhone
running iOS 7 or higher. If you have one of those devices consider
downloading it now (the basic version is free).
The app will run the timers for your sprints, but it does a lot more than
that. It tracks word counts, start and end time, and calculates both WPH
(words per hour) and WPD (words per day). As you continue through this
book you'll begin to understand how important those metrics are and why
the app is useful. You can download it by searching for 5,000 Words Per
Hour on the App Store, or by clicking this link if you're reading the ebook.
If you don't have an iPhone or iPad, don't worry! I've created a
spreadsheet to track your sprints. It has most of the basic functionality of
the app, though it doesn't include achievements or a timer. If you can't use
the app, all you need is the spreadsheet and a stopwatch!

Your First Micro Sprint

You're about to begin your very first sprint. Don't worry, it's not
anything monumental. This will be a micro-sprint. If you read the intro
chapter you remember me mentioning them, because they're how I started
this whole process. They're designed to be quick and easy, but as time goes
on you'll get better and you'll eventually graduate to full sprints. Don't
worry about that for now, though. We'll get there.
Your micro sprint will last for exactly five minutes. That's a nice bite-
size chunk of time, and it should let you focus on just one scene. More
importantly, it's manageable for your brain. Writing stamina is built just
like muscle. You wouldn't start off running a marathon, or bench pressing
315 pounds. Nor would you try to sit down for an hour and just write if
you've never done it before.
There are a few steps I'd like you to do before we get started:

#1- Open your word processor of choice to a blank document

#2- Turn off wifi and/or internet on your computer.
#3- Put on mood music appropriate to the scene you're about to write.
#4- Jot down a quick paragraph describing the scene or topic you're
about to write about. These words do not count towards the micro sprint.
#5- DO NOT STOP

Number five is the most important, so take it to heart. You're not going
to stop writing at any point. You aren't going to go back and fix typos, or
retype paragraphs to make them cleaner. You're going to write straight
through, no interruptions and no stopping. Ready? Set a timer for five
minutes. GO.

Results
How did you do? If you followed the steps above you're probably
staring at a small pile of words you feel are utter crap. That's totally okay.
The goal, at first, is quantity over quality. You need to train yourself to
generate a massive volume of text without editing it. If you can do that
you can crank through an entire manuscript in less than a month.
You may be asking what the point is if the writing you've turned out is
utter crap. There are several massive advantages:

#1- You're learning to complete projects. The vast majority of writers

will never finish a short story, much less a novel. Teaching yourself to
write in sprints will propel you to the end of your project.
#2- You'll begin seeing things at a larger level. By that I mean you pick
out common problems in your writing that show up over and over. Things
like word re-use, character tics and all sorts of other problems. Once you
see those tendencies you'll automatically begin to compensate, and future
drafts will be better while still being written at high speed.
#3- You'll learn story structure, something that those who endlessly
tinker with the same three chapters will never experience. Completing
projects teaches characterization, plotting, pacing and a whole host of
other parts to your craft. You complete entire novels by cranking out
thousands of words each and every day. As of this writing I've written
seven novels. Every last one has massively improved my skills, and I now
crank out better novels faster than ever.
The endless tinkerers I know have inevitably never finished anything.
They agonize over the same page or chapter for months, tweaking each
word until it's as perfect as it can get. I laud that kind of perfectionist
approach, but I save that for my final draft. To get there I have to crank out
four or five previous drafts.

Words Per Hour

This first micro sprint is also going to generate a concept you'll see
used throughout this book. The idea of Words Per Hour. Since your micro
sprint was five minutes multiply the total by 12 (or let my app do it for
you). That's your WPH, for a micro sprint. Why the clarification? Because
writing for a solid hour has to be built up to and takes a lot more
discipline. You can't simply multiply five minutes of work by 12 to get a
true representation of your WPH.
The number is still useful though, because of the exercise to follow.
You're going to start tracking your WPH for a 5 minute sprint every day,
and you'll see that number begin to go up. This is critical, because the
thing that will keep you coming back to the keyboard every day is
progress. If you know you're improving you'll be inspired to keep working.
This is why it's so vital to track everything.
What can be tracked can be improved, but the inverse is not true. If you
aren't tracking you have no idea if you're getting better. That's exactly why
I quit writing before, and also the reason I will never quit again. Instead
I'll continue to improve every day, and if you do the work so will you.

A Quick Note About Exercises

This book will be useless to you if you don't do the exercises. However,
you might be sitting on a bus right now in a position to keep reading, but
not to do a writing sprint. If you'd prefer to read the entire book before
doing any exercises that's fine. You'll find the complete list in the
Appendix at the back of the book.

Exercise #1- Micro-sprints

This exercise will be ongoing. Create a daily reminder in whatever app
you use (a calendar program, the reminder app on your smartphone or any
other method will work). This reminder is for a 5 minute writing sprint
every day. You'll record your start time, end time and number of words
written every day for the first week. Most importantly, you will record
your WPH as explained above.
That doesn't mean you can't write for longer periods, but we're starting
small. Once you've mastered 5 minutes for a week we'll take it to 10.
Eventually you'll reach 30, which is my optimum sprint length. You may
find that yours is longer or shorter, but this exercise is the first step in
answering that question.
If you've downloaded the 5KWPH app it will take care of all this work
for you, or you can use the spreadsheet I created if you don't have an
iPhone or iPad.
Chapter 2- Tortoise Enclosure

Hopefully your first micro-sprint went well, but it will only benefit you
long-term if you build a strong foundation. The key to being a successful
author is consistency. You need to write every day, preferably at the same
time, so your body and mind become trained. You need a writing habit,
one that you will practice for the rest of your life. To enable this, you need
a time and place where you accomplish your writing. This can mean
waking up at 5:00 am every day and sitting on your couch with a laptop. It
can mean going to a coffee shop for lunch. How you set it up is entirely up
to you, as long as you set it up and follow through.
That's both easier and harder than it sounds. Just do it works for Nike,
but it may not work for you. Don't worry, though; you're about to learn the
blueprint for building your tortoise enclosure. Wait, your what now?
About three years ago, I was browsing Reddit and I happened across
this video by John Cleese. He explains how to set up a tortoise enclosure, a
sacred space where your mind is primed to enter a state of creative flow.
He advocates the same consistency I mentioned above, and he warns about
the dangers of interruptions.
I'd recommend taking ten minutes to watch the video, but here's the
process in a nutshell.

Setting up your enclosure

Your tortoise enclosure is more than just a physical location, though
that is part of it. It's a time and place your mind must associate with
writing. When you're there, you write. It's that simple. This is why I don't
recommend writing in the same space you do other activities. If you watch
Netflix or mindlessly surf the web in the same chair where you write, it
will be that much harder to buckle down and work when it's time to work.
If, on the other hand, you unplug your laptop and cart it down to
Starbucks at 6:10 every morning, you're far more likely to develop a habit
where you only write while there. I realize that many of you only have one
computer and taking it somewhere else may not be possible. If that's your
situation you can still set up an enclosure, but you're going to have to work
a bit harder at it. You'll need to erect barriers to prevent yourself from
indulging in distractions. For example, if you find yourself surfing the
web, then use an app like Freedom to block the web during your sprint.

Boundaries of Space
The first thing that defines your tortoise enclosure are physical
boundaries. This means walling yourself off from any and all interruptions
for the duration of your writing sprint. Turn off your email notifications.
Block the web with the Freedom app I mentioned above. If you live with
other people tell them you'll be writing and can't be disturbed, then close
the door to your office. If you live in an area where that's impossible, then
pick a time when everyone else is asleep. However you do it you must
eradicate all distractions, because they are absolutely disastrous to the
creative process. Every time you tab out of Scrivener or Word to check the
internet, every time you answer a phone call or turn around to speak to a
family member, you're setting yourself back to square one, and it will be
that much harder to get back into the flow state.

Boundaries of Time
The second thing that defines your tortoise enclosure is time. You need
a pre-defined start time and end time, and these times do not necessarily
need to correspond with just one sprint. For example, my start time is 6:20
a.m. and my end time is 7:30 am. During that time, I will do two thirty-
minute sprints. At the end of the first sprint, I will take ten minutes to surf
the web, check email, check Facebook or deal with any other distraction.
Then I'm right back at it. This hour and ten minutes is sacred, and my
loved ones know that when I am in this space I am not to be interrupted.

Eat That Frog

I recommend you set up your writing time as as early as possible. What
time do you wake up now? Could you wake up 30 minutes earlier? I know,
I know. I'm not a morning person either. I used to hate getting up before
the sun. Once upon a time, I worked a 1:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. shift. This
meant I wasn't in bed until midnight and didn't wake up until 8:00 or 9:00
in the morning. Long after I left that job I was still in the habit of sleeping
in for as long as possible. If I had to be at work at 8 I'd get up at 7, and
most people I know fall into that habit.
Then I read a book by Brian Tracy called Eat That Frog. The strange
title is a quote from Mark Twain. I'm paraphrasing here, but the basic idea
is as follows. If eating a frog is the toughest thing you have to do every
day, then you should start with that or that frog will croak at you all day.
Do the hardest thing you need to do first thing, because then you know it
got done.
If you wait until you get home from work in the evening to write, it
might get done. Or, if you had a particularly brutal day, you might collapse
on the couch and binge watch some Game of Thrones instead. It's easy to
let the important things slip when you're exhausted, but far easier to get
them done when you start the day with them.
I used this principle to great effect. It was hard, but I started getting up
at 6:30. Once I'd done that for a few weeks and saw what I could get done,
I wanted more time, so I started getting up at 6:00. Within a year I'd
pushed that back to 5 a.m., even though I didn't have to be at work until
8:00. This gave me enough time to work out for an hour and write for an
hour. I dropped a ton of weight, got in great shape, and published my first
novel. The cost? Instead of going to bed at 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. I started
going to bed at 9:30. This single change has dramatically impacted my
quality of life, and I highly recommend you consider making it.
Do your writing first thing, before the pressures of the day begin to
mount. Eat that frog, people.

Exercise #2- Set up your tortoise enclosure

Take a good look at your schedule and pick a time block that you're
going to devote to writing. You need to define a start time and end time,
and you need to pick a place where you will not be disturbed. If there is a
chance of being disturbed, inform your friends, family or co-workers that
you need privacy. Get some headphones if needed. Once you've mentally
defined this space, actually write out a contract with yourself. 'I will write
at my computer from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. every day.' Writing things
down has a powerful psychological effect, and makes them real to your
subconscious in a way simply thinking them does not.

Bonus: Wake your ass up a half hour earlier than usual and use that as
the time boundary for your tortoise enclosure.
Chapter 3- Track Everything

Once you've defined your tortoise enclosure, it's time to start tracking.
Anything that can be tracked can be improved on, but if you aren't tracking
your progress then you have no way to know if you're improving. This is
true of everything from lifting weights to losing weight to writing.
Remember that WPH number we started tracking in exercise number one?
This is where you start putting it to use.
Fortunately, as mentioned previously, I've created a couple tools you
can use. Hopefully you're already using the 5KWPH app or have
downloaded the spreadsheet. If not, take a moment to download whichever
you'd like. Having one or the other will be invaluable to your growth as a
writer. You can download the spreadsheet by clicking the link, but if you're
listening to the audiobook or reading the paperback you can get it by going
to chrisfoxwrites.com/5KWPH.
If you DO have an iPhone or an iPad take a peek at 5KWPH. The basic
app is free, but it does include a premium set of features that will run you
$2.99 if you choose to unlock them. This is my blatant attempt to con you
out of enough money to subsidize my next cup of coffee, but in exchange
you'll get some very helpful tools. The basic app tracks your writing
sprints, but the premium app introduces projects, achievements and some
pretty awesome reports. The latter will help you track your growth over
time, and that should definitely be your take away from this chapter.
Why did I take the time to make these tools (other than subsidizing my
coffee habit)? Because I know better than anyone that you're only going to
go through these exercises if they're easy. If there are too many barriers
between you and improvement, then you aren't going to do the work.
Sadly, that's human nature. So I'm removing those barriers. Now let's get
cracking!

Daily Word Count

Each and every day you'll record your writing sprints. It's vital that you
measure your start time and end time, because that's going to be used to
calculate your words per hour. It may not be immediately apparent why
tracking your numbers is so important, so let me explain. For those that
already understand, please indulge me.
I first started tracking my numbers back in 2010. Back then if I had a
2,000 word day I was thrilled. Hell, I'd high-five myself in the bathroom
with that kind of number. Fast forward four years. If I have a 2,000 word
day now I get depressed, because it means I screwed up. I have to ask
myself what the hell happened.
Tracking my daily word count is the largest reason for this shift in
mindset. I started small, back when 1,000 words was a good day. Each day
I tried to improve, and it was very much like working out. Every day my
writing muscle got just a little bit stronger. I cultivated discipline and I
practiced my craft.
Today I write 5,000 new words or edit at least 10,000 words every day.
That's seven days a week. That includes holidays. No exceptions. I even
write on Christmas. If that sounds hard core, I want you to realize that you
too can attain this level of dedication, and that when you do you'll achieve
more than you ever dreamed possible.
Even if you don't want to write on Christmas, I promise you can double
or triple your output through the simple act of daily tracking.

Words Per Hour

In a way, your daily word count is the most important thing you can
track, simply because overall production trumps everything. If you want to
write novels, you need a massive volume of consistent, daily output. That
said, WPH is more important in the long run, because your efficiency is
what will carry you to the next level.
Look at it this way. If you write for three solid hours every day, and you
write at 1200 WPH that's 3,600 words a day. That's massive. At that rate
you'll write an entire first draft of a 100,000 word novel in a month. Cause
for celebration, right? Damn straight.
But what if your WPH rate creeps up to 2,500? Then you're producing
7,500 words a day during the same time period. Or, more likely, you're
hitting 5,000 a day in two-thirds the time it used to take you to write
3,600. Words per hour is vital, which is why you'll hear me harp on that
metric over and over.
 It's why this entire book is focused on it. Get that number up and your
productivity will SOAR. If you're using my app and / or my spreadsheet
you already have the tools needed to track it. If not, feel free to roll your
own. It doesn't matter what you use, as long as you track your writing.

Your Own Spreadsheet

If you want to write your own spreadsheet I'd suggest using the
following fields:

Date
Words
Sprint Type
Start Time
End time
Words Per Hour

You're tracking daily words, whether those words are edited or written,
how long you wrote for and most importantly your words per hour. The
formulas for computing these are very straight forward, so I'm not going
to belabor them here. If you're not sure how to calculate them feel free to
download my sheet and take a peek.
Regardless of whether you make one or use mine, you need a
spreadsheet or an app to track your output. That will be vital to your
writing career; trust me on this.

Exercise #3- Set up your tracking

This exercise is probably the easiest in the entire book. Download my
app, my spreadsheet, or both. If you don't like either then create your own
as mentioned above. Once you've done so, record the micro sprint(s)
you've already done, and continue to track them for the rest of the week.
At the end you'll have a graph showing your words per hour, and trust
me when I say that they will go up over time. Look at your words per hour.
Now set a goal to double that amount in the next week. If that doesn't
sound hard enough, then triple it. Your goal should really stretch your
abilities, and it's okay to fall short. Even if you do, you'll still have made
progress!
Chapter 4- Clear The Decks

Woohoo! We've completed our first micro sprint. We've got a brand new
tortoise enclosure where we're going to write, and we have a nifty system
to track our daily word count and words per hour. We're ready to write! But
then we sit down at the computer, and get kicked squarely in the face by
distractions.
Email notifications, phone calls, Reddit, Facebook...the distractions are
endless. If you want to write 5,000 Words Per Hour you need to remove
them all, to set up a sacred space for your writing. A mental space where
the only thing you do is write.
To do that we need to clear the decks. We're going to start by making a
list of all the things that typically distract you while you write. Anything
you've ever done that draws your attention away from writing should go on
this list. Here's what mine looks like:

Reddit
Facebook
Email
Texts
Phone Calls
Twitter
Checking sales stats

Your list is probably similar, but the specific items on it don't matter.
Eliminating them all does. Before you sit down to write, you're going to
take care of them in a systematic way. This is how I do it:

Reddit / Facebook- Turn off the web.

Email- Sort through my inbox, then turn off my email for the duration
of the writing session.
Phone Calls / Texts - Put phone in Airplane mode or do not disturb.
Sales Stats- Check before my sprint.
 Social Media- Check before my sprint, like sales stats. I do this because
it only takes a minute and then I don't wonder.

I deal with everything on my list so they'll no longer be a distraction. I

won't allow myself to check any of them until I've finished the next
writing sprint. Then, as a reward, I allow myself to do something (or
several somethings) on the list. But while I am writing I am not allowed to
do anything else. This means shutting down your mail client, turning off
your phone, and investing in an app like Freedom to block web access for
a fixed amount of time.
The trick here is to quite literally train your brain. You have to teach it
that your writing happens in a sacred space, one where it is only allowed to
write. In the same way your mother may have made you stay at the table
until you were done eating your vegetables, you're going to stay at the
table and write until you hit your word quota.

Exercise #4- Clear your decks

Make a list of all the common distractions you face on a daily basis
when writing. Keep this list handy, because you're going to continue to add
to it as you read this book.
Now add a column labeled solution. Go down to each item and
brainstorm a solution until you have a method of canceling out every
distraction that normally prevents you from getting in the writing mode.
Continue until you've added every distraction you can think of, and also
added a solution for each.
Now get a sticky note, or something else you can use as a reminder.
Attach that to the bottom center of your monitor. Every time you look at
that sticky during a writing sprint it will remind you to stay focused. It's
okay if you get distracted. Just come back to the writing as quickly as
possible.
Chapter 5- Organize Your Scene

All the distractions are dealt with, yay! But now you're staring at a
blank screen and have no idea what to write. Yikes, now what? This is
where planning comes in. There are a whole swath of you who will
disagree strongly with the rest of this chapter, but if you are currently a
'pantser' who doesn't believe in outlining or planning I urge you to read it
anyway. If you're adamant that you won't find value here, you can skip to
the next chapter, but if staring at a cursor on a blank page is an issue you
face then I strongly encourage you to read it and judge for yourself.
Once upon a time I was a pantser myself. For those unfamiliar with the
term a pantser is someone who writes by the seat of their pants. They sit
down and just crank out stories with only a vague idea of what's going to
happen before they begin writing. The best known writers in this category
are Stephen King and George R.R. Martin. If such big names use the
method than surely it has some merit. Even I can admit that. Here's the
thing, though. My writing improved dramatically in both speed and quality
when I made the transition from pantser to plotter. Writing with a plan has
made everything far, far easier and I am certainly not alone in that
assertion. Brandon Sanderson is the best known example of a plotter that I
can think of, and there's a reason people joke that he's a writing machine.
He knows precisely what he's going to write about before he sits down to
write it. So how can you do the same without spending hours outlining?
The rest of this chapter gives a broad overview on how I plot a novel.
It's not exhaustive and the topic definitely deserves an entire book (likely
my next one in this series).

Your General Plot

You should be able to sum up your novel's plot in two or three
paragraphs. Those paragraphs do not need to be the same thing you'd write
in your blurb, and in fact they should differ significantly. They need to
sum the major elements, and should answer the following questions:
 1- Who is your protagonist(s)?
2- Who is your antagonist(s)?
3- What is the major conflict between them (why are they at odds with
each other)?
4- What is your epic ending?

Let's use Star Wars as an example. If you haven't seen Star Wars you've
likely been living in a fallout shelter for the last forty years, so take this
opportunity to rent or buy it!

Luke Skywalker is a naive farm boy on a remote desert world. He is

drawn into a quest to free Princess Leia from the Evil Empire, which seeks
to crush the Rebellion she leads. Luke is guided by Obi-Wan Kenobi to the
Death Star, where he must battle stormtroopers and Darth Vader in order
to rescue the Princess. The Empire follows him after they escape, and they
must somehow destroy the Death Star or the rebel alliance will be
extinguished forever.

Notice that this paragraph is very rough. It doesn't mention Han Solo,
Chewie, the Millennium Falcon, the droids, or many of the other plot
elements involved in the movie. That's totally okay, because we don't need
those yet. We're building a rough framework, and we'll fill in the pieces
later.

Your Story Timeline

Most stories follow the three act model and Star Wars is no exception.

To follow this pattern you need to define:

1- The Inciting Incident, an interruption in your protagonist's life.

2- The first doorway. Once the hero steps through it their world can
never be the same.
3- The second doorway. Once the hero steps through it the final
confrontation with the antagonist begins.
 Here's how those are defined in Star Wars:

1- Luke's uncle Owen buys a pair of droids and Luke learns that they
belong to Obi Wan Kenobi.
2- After visiting Obi Wan, Luke returns to find that his aunt and uncle
have been murdered by the Empire. His home has been destroyed and he
has no choice but to join Obi Wan on his quest.
3- The Death Star has entered the Yavin system, and the rebel base will
be destroyed unless Luke and his squadron of X-wing fighters can stop it.

This structure applies to almost every movie and book you've seen /
read, and it's as popular as it is for a damn good reason. It works. Your
readers want to follow a well-defined story with solid elements they
understand. The three act structure gives you an easy tool to achieve that. I
highly recommend applying it to your story. You may even find that your
existing story already fits into this mold even though you didn't intend it
to. If it doesn't, consider adding pieces to make it fit. If that feels too
restricting, then at the very least define a beginning and an ending for your
story. What's at stake for your hero? Why are they involved in this story?
If they could choose to walk away, then odds are good your story isn't very
compelling.

Harness Your Inner Five Year Old

Once you have a rough structure as described above it's time to harness
that inner five year old we all have. The kid that asks why, why, why? Do
the same thing with your plot.
My book Project Solaris is a cross between the TV show Heroes and the
old classic X-Files. Aliens have been experimenting on mankind to imbue
them with powers, and our main character is one of those they've taken
repeatedly. I felt this was a great premise, but I needed to flesh the concept
out.
What are David's (my protagonist) powers? What are Jillian's (the love
interest)? What do the aliens get out of all this? What does David do for a
living?
Answering these questions gave me a basic plot that allowed me to start
creating scenes, which is exactly what you need to do before you sit down
to write. This planning more than anything else is why I was able to write
the entire novel in just 13 days.

Drill down to your scene

The above section lets you plot out the overall novel, but you also need
to define each specific scene before you sit down to write it. For dedicated
plotters that can mean plotting out every story beat (which I usually do),
but if you're more of a pantser you should at least have a general idea of
what's about to happen. At a minimum you should define the following.

The characters that will appear.

The time and place the scene appears in.
The major action that will occur.
The goal of the scene. Where will the characters be at the end? What
will be different about their world?
The emotion(s) you're trying to evoke. What is the purpose of this
scene?

Turn on the movie projector

Now that you've formed a rough definition for your scene, it's time to
turn on the movie projector. Do you remember playing pretend as a kid?
We used to be cops and robbers, Jedi, or secret agents. If you're anything
like me, you'd map out whole adventures in your head. Now you need to
do the same thing with the scene you're about to write. Assume the role of
the point of view character and let the whole thing play in your mind. Does
it seem cool? Would you enjoy writing it? Are there some fun conflicts
between some of the characters? The answer should be yes. If it isn't,
spend a little time tweaking until you feel that it is. When you can answer
yes to the preceding questions, you're ready for your next sprint.

A quick note about non-fiction

 Obviously everything in this chapter doesn't really apply if you're
writing an essay or a non-fiction book. That doesn't mean you shouldn't
plan it out anyway. You can gather the topics and chapters you'd like to
cover in much the same way. The only difference is that you won't be
using the same 3 act model I listed above. Planning is your best friend if
productivity is your goal.

Exercise #5- Plot your first scene

Define a scene using the drill down section, then let that scene play
through your mind. Visualize your characters, the action and the
resolution.

Bonus: Create a story timeline for your novel, defining the inciting
incident and both doorways. Add an awesome ending.
Chapter 6- Full Sprints

Congratulations, you've now learned all the major components

necessary to run your first full sprint. The major difference between
micro-sprints and full sprints is length, though you do need to plan more
scenes. This will be very much like your micro-sprints, but before we get
started you're going to go through a checklist to make sure you're ready for
a longer session.

Putting it all together

By now you should have done the following:

1- Created a tortoise enclosure. You have:

A) Start time
B) End time
C) Place you will not be interrupted

2- You are now tracking your sprints either using my 5KWPH app or the
spreadsheet (or one of your own). This means tracking:
A) Sprint start time
B) Sprint end time
C) Word Count

3- You've cleared the decks. That means you've:

A) Dealt with all social media
B) Cleared your email
C) Turned off the internet
D) Put your phone in airplane or silent mode
E) Told family, roommates or loved ones that you'd prefer not to be
disturbed for the duration of your sprint.

4- You've organized your scene(s). This means you know exactly what
you're going to write about.
 If all of the above have been dealt with, congratulations, you're about
ready to do some serious sprinting. If taking care of all this seemed a bit
daunting, I have good news. It will get easier through practice. The more
you do this, the faster you'll get at it. Eventually the above steps will be
automatic and you'll be able to get into creative flow in just a couple
minutes.

Permission to Suck
Before we start the clock on your first longer sprint, I want to revisit a
concept we mentioned earlier. This one is vital to your success and it can
be incredibly difficult to achieve, especially if you're a perfectionist where
your writing is concerned. I used to be, so believe me I understand.
You need to give yourself permission to suck. Once you start writing,
you are not allowed to tinker or edit at all. After you've written the words
they stay exactly as they are. That means no stopping and no going back,
not even to correct typos. Later in the book we'll discuss editing sprints,
and you'll get a chance to clean up your writing. Right now what's
important is getting it down. It doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, it won't
be perfect. The goal here is to finish the scene.
If it helps, I want you to consider it this way. When you've completed
your manuscript, there is every possibility that the entire chapter you're
about to write could be cut or re-written from scratch. If that becomes
necessary, all the time you spent agonizing over specific words, or
correcting grammar and spelling, is completely wasted. If you can just
power through without stopping, you'll end up with a complete scene, and
you can choose to both edit and improve that scene in the proper way when
the time comes.

Changes and Additions

So what happens if you run into something you need to add to a
previous scene? Or what if you identify the need to create an entirely new
scene? This happens all the time. I'll deviate from my current scene just
long enough to create a placeholder document for the new scene. If I need
to modify an existing scene I make a note of that fact, but I do not ever go
back and re-write it then. There's plenty of time for that when you get to
your editing sprint, which we will cover later. So if you find yourself
running into logical or narrative problems while writing, just write as if
the previous scenes already supported what you're writing now.
I realize that may be a bit unclear, so let me give you an example. Let's
say you decide in chapter 26 that your hero needs a companion. Start
writing chapter 26 as if that companion has been there the entire time.
When you handle your editing sprint, you can modify earlier chapters, or
add entire new ones to support this newly added character.
For now all you need to do is create a note or placeholder document that
says something like 'added Kali in this scene. Where would she have been
introduced? What scenes is she a part of?'

A few last minute suggestions

Before you start writing is there anything else you can think of that you
might want in the next twenty minutes? Do you need a glass of water?
Have you used the bathroom? Take care of those things now.
All set? Then it's time for the meat of this chapter, the sprint itself.

Exercise #6- Full Sprints

Set a 20 minute timer and write for the entire time. Do not stop for any
reason. If you get stuck, that's okay. Refer to your scene notes if you need
to. Once you are done, record your total words. Well done! Record your
sprint in your tracker and note your words per hour. This is day one. In a
few weeks that number will be significantly higher!
Chapter 7- Increasing Your Speed

You're in the home stretch! By this point you understand all the key
points surrounding WPH and WPD. You know that you need a consistent
writing habit, and that by tracking your daily output you'll naturally begin
to increase your speed. But what if that isn't enough? I've made some bold
claims about writing 5,000 words an hour, which astute readers realize
amounts to 84 words per minute. How is that possible? What if you can
only type 50 words per minute? That makes it impossible to hit the goals
I'm claiming.
Unless you do one or both of the following:

Become better at typing

There are a number of free typing courses out there. If you're only
typing 50 words per minute, then that's a hard cap on your writing speed.
If you want to increase your WPH you need to get better at typing. Just
like every other part of writing, that comes from practice, but not just any
practice. Deliberate practice.
You need to practice the right skills in the right way if you want to get
faster. Writing sprints will help do that, but if you feel like your words per
minute is not going up fast enough then you need to download one of the
aforementioned courses and diligently practice until your typing speed
improves. Doing so is a life long investment in your career.
Or, if that sounds too daunting, you can cheat and use voice dictation. In
this case, cheaters most definitely prosper.

Voice Dictation
I divide my writing career into two phases: before I learned about voice
dictation, and after. My love-hate relationship with dictation began fifteen
years ago. I thought it would be awesome. It wasn't. The apps were too
clunky, too expensive, and their accuracy was abysmal. I abandoned
dictation for many years, until I ran across Elizabeth Ann West's thread
about training her Dragon on Kboards.com. It changed my life.
Voice dictation is insanely useful. The average person speaks at
between 140-160 words per minute. Can you type that fast? I'm good, but
I'm not THAT good. My top speed is about 120 words per minute, and
there's no way I can sustain that for an entire hour. Unless I use voice
dictation.
The majority of the times I've hit 5,000 words an hour it's been using
Dragon Dictate. I'll admit it takes some getting used to. You need to speak
your punctuation, which means you're saying sentences like this:

"David scanned the horizon comma shading his eyes from the sun
period."

It feels damn odd, especially at first. I also found it difficult to

backspace or maneuver around the document, but you know what? That
works out PERFECTLY for writing sprints, because you're not supposed to
stop or go back. Voice dictation forces you to write forward, and if you're
focused on the scene you can easily achieve speeds of 80-100 words per
minute.
It's incredibly powerful stuff, and there's an added bonus. You can dump
audio files into Dragon, which means if you're standing at a bus stop you
can record a note on your phone, and then import it later. I use this all the
time to write entire scenes. I have a five to seven minute writing sprint
every morning while I wait for the number 54 to take me from Novato to
San Francisco.
That always yields at least 300 words, and it's usually over 500. How
many words per day are you cranking out right now? How would you like
to add another 500 that costs you no extra time? Once you harness the
power of voice dictation you can add thousands of words a day and it costs
you exactly zero extra time.
Let that sink in. Surely that's worth the pain of learning a new system. If
you put in just one week where you force yourself to use voice dictation
every day, I promise you will never give it up. That doesn't mean you can't
type the bulk of your words, but it does mean you'll add a potent tool to
your arsenal.
 That tool is even more potent if you suffer from Carpal Tunnel
Syndrome, because it takes pressure off your poor wrists.

Exercise #7- Increase Your Speed

Download a typing program and use it to figure out your current typing
speed. Set a goal of where you want that speed to be in a month, then
check in weekly to see what your speed is.

Bonus: Download Dragon Dictate (or the PC equivalent) and force

yourself to use it for one week. It will change your life forever.
Chapter 8- Editing Sprints

Congratulations! If you've made it this far you've completed a fist full

of micro-sprints and your first full sprint. That's assuming you're doing the
exercises. You are doing the exercises, right? If you aren't, here...have
some guilt. This book will do nothing for you if you don't practice the
things that it teaches. We're going to assume that you have done the sprint,
which resulted in you having several hundred to a couple thousand words.
If you followed the instructions, those words were written very quickly
and are probably rife with spelling mistakes, plot errors, grammatical
problems, and a whole host of other issues.
Now it's time to edit those words, and we're going to do it using a
sprint, just like we did to write the original words. I have good news about
editing sprints. They are far, far easier than writing new words, because all
you're doing is reading and correcting previous work. Normally I don't do
any editing sprints until I've completed an entire manuscript. I write like a
madman, pushing as close to 5k an hour as I can until I've completed an
entire draft.
If that sounds like a foreign concept, let me sell you on the benefits. I
wrote the rough draft for a novel entitled Project Solaris in just 13 days.
The whole thing, from start to finish. If you add in the planning for that
novel, the entire thing still only took three weeks to write. Intrigued? I
hope so.
The editing sprint took me another seven days, so from concept to a
draft ready for alpha readers it took me just under a month. That would
have amazed me as recently as a year ago. Now that kind of pace is
normal, and the more I practice the faster I get. Trust me when I say
there's nothing unique or special about me. You can duplicate my pace and
probably pass it if you put in the practice.

Editing all in one shot

As I mentioned above I write an entire draft before I start editing. I do
this because it's much easier to spot plot problems when you're reading an
entire manuscript. Typically I'll be in new content mode for two to four
weeks, depending on the length of my novel. Afterwards, I put on my
editor's hat, which has a very interesting effect on words per hour. Because
editing is easier, my words per hour is almost triple when editing. I can
glide from typo to grammatical error to misplaced punctuation very
quickly. Because my pace is so quick, I can also spot narrative issues. I'm
very careful to note which mode I'm in, so I end up with three different
WPH figures. All of them are important, and we want to see improvement
in each over time.

The Content Edit

So how does my editing process work? During my writing phase I'll
constantly be adding notes to my manuscript. Scrivener makes this very
easy, but you can use any platform that works for you. Using our example
from the last chapter I'll often add new characters. It won't be clear to me
until late in the first draft that they need to exist, so before I actually sit
down to an editing sprint I'll map backwards and figure out what scenes
they should have appeared in. When I start my editing sprints, I simply
read through a given chapter, correcting as I go. The goal of this edit is to
fix content problems. This includes adding or removing characters, fixing
plot problems I've identified, or adding / re-writing entire chapters.
This edit is the harder of the two and my WPH tends to be lower as a
result. It's much faster than writing new content, but not nearly as fast as
the second edit I'll do.

The Proofread
This is the final pass before I release a manuscript to alpha readers.
After I've added in the new content, I'll go back and read the entire thing
again. This time I only allow myself to correct grammar or spelling,
unless I run across a massive problem I somehow missed in the content
edit. My WPH is insane during this phase, because I'm making so few
changes. It's almost the same pace as reading.
 Exercise #8- Editing Sprint
Perform a content edit on the scene you created in the last chapter. Yes,
this breaks the 'write the entire draft before you edit' rule, but for the sake
of this exercise it will work. Plus, here's the twist. Either add a new
character to the scene you wrote, or change something fundamental about
a character (gender or age). Record your WPH.

Bonus: Do a proofread edit for the same scene. Record your WPH for
both edits and note the difference. How does your scene look at the end?
How much time did you spend writing and editing the entire thing?
Chapter 9- Measuring Progress

I've mentioned the concept of Words Per Hour many times in this book.
I've further complicated matters by giving you a separate WPH for editing
and proofreading. On top of that you're also tracking Words Per Day. If
that all seems daunting, don't worry. Tracking it is easier than you'd
expect, especially if you're using the 5KWPH app. The spreadsheet works
too, but regardless of which you use it should make it easy to input your
data.
So why are we tracking all that stuff? Because the only way to improve
is to compare where you are today to where you were yesterday. If this
doesn't quite gel yet, don't worry. Once you see the process in action you'll
see the benefits.

Captain, they've adapted.

The best way to increase your WPH is constant experimentation. You
need to find your strengths and identify your weaknesses. This will occur
naturally the longer you write, but you cannot be afraid to try new things.
This can mean writing at different times of the day. Or different settings.
Maybe you need to lug your laptop down to the park and sit on a bench
with no wifi. Maybe you've tried the whole 'write first thing in the
morning' tip and it just doesn't work. So try writing before you go to bed.
Every last one of us is different, and each of us has to find our own
natural rhythm. Yours will be different from mine, and while many of the
tips in this book should help you identify your rhythm, only you will know
what works for you.

Words Per Hour

Words per hour is the first and most important metric in the long run.
There are only so many hours in the day, and if you want to make a living
with this whole writing thing you need to maximize those hours. That
means getting as fast as possible, which is the whole point of this book.
 The first and best way for you to improve is simply through practice
and repetition. If you complete at least one writing sprint every day for the
next month, you should see a noticeable increase in your writing speed.
Along the way you'll learn all sorts of interesting things. You may find that
your first half hour yields 2400 WPH, while the second is only 1800 WPH
and the third is 1600 WPH. Or maybe it's the exact opposite and your first
sprint is the slowest.
It's only through practice, repetition, and study that these patterns will
emerge. This is why it's so important to track every sprint, and to use the
graphs that I've provided to track your progress over time. Give me 30
days and I promise you'll see a burst of productivity that exceeds anything
you could have expected.

Words Per Day

This is obviously an important metric, because your total output
determines just how fast you can crank out novels (or non-fiction if that's
your game). I believe it's less important, because raising your WPH will
naturally raise your WPD. Take a look at your WPH from the first full
sprint. What if you doubled that in the next 30 days? What if you tripled it
in the next 90? How many words per day would that result in?

Building Stamina
If you've read Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k (and I recommend you do) then
you're already familiar with the concept of writing stamina. When you
first start your writing sprints, you may find it difficult to manage just five
minutes. That's okay. Try running five or six five-minute sprints in a day.
You already know you can do one, so why not repeat them throughout the
day?
Eventually you'll be able to raise them to 10 minute sprints. Then 20
minutes. How much could you pump out in a day if you did five 20 minute
sprints at your peak WPH? This is how I managed to crank out an entire
novel, complete with edits and proofreading, in just 30 days. Through
stamina.
That stamina has taken me a LONG time to build. I've come a long way
since my two to three minute writing sprints back at the credit union. That
growth continues to this day, and next year I'll be able to manage more
than I can today. The key is constant, incremental progress. Each day
needs to be better than the last.
What if I screw up and miss a day? Or an entire week? That's totally
okay. As soon as you realize you missed some days get right back up and
start again. Don't judge yourself for missing days, just keep moving
forward. Where do you want to be in a year? The time is going to pass
anyway. Would you rather spend that year building your writing stamina so
that you have an entire novel written at the end of it? Or do you want to
get to the end and wonder what you could have done if only you'd gotten
your ass in front of that keyboard every day?
You CAN do this. Put in the time and effort and the rewards will come.

Writing fast is not writing bad

Many writers have a psychological hangup that is perpetrated by the
traditional publishing world. If you write fast then you must write crap,
right? That is patently false. Your ability to wordsmith is not diminished
by writing quickly. Writing 5,000 words per hour doesn't mean that people
won't want to read your stories. Again, quite the opposite.
The faster you can crank out words, the more times you can iterate.
Each iteration teaches you something new about writing, and you will
improve far, far more quickly than the guy who tinkers with every word
and only cranks out a novel once every three years. Writing quickly and
completing projects teaches you parts of the craft that can only be learned
through experience.
The gal who's been writing the same chapter for two months might find
just the right words, but you'll have learned how to convey emotion, show
motivation, how to describe a scene, how to craft dialogue, and a dozen
other skills she's never even considered because she's written a grand total
of 20,000 words in her entire career. So give yourself over to the process.
Master writing quickly.
Then master the rest of your craft. Do it in that order and you will
eclipse everyone telling you what can or cannot be done.

Exercise #9- Measure Your Progress

 Take a look at your graphs in the app or the spreadsheet. What is your
current WPH and WPD for each category? Now set a goal for where you'd
like them to be in 30 days and enter that into the tool you're using to track
your progress.
Chapter 10- Reward Systems

Motivation is a tricky beast, and one of the things that will contribute
the most to your success is a strategy to keep yours from flagging. There
are many ways to do this, and in this section I'm going to cover some of
the best I've found.

The Dreaded Burnout

One of the biggest killers for a writer is burnout, and this can come at
any stage. For me, it most often struck when I was mid-project, which is
why my hard drive is littered with the corpses of half-finished novels. I'd
get around the 50-60% mark, decide I hated what I was writing, and then
quit.
Several things got me over the hump to the point where I started
finishing novels. The first was increasing my writing speed. If it takes
eighteen months to crank out a draft of your novel, then it's not surprising
that the burnout beast will hunt you down and devour your motivation. If
you can finish a draft in 30-45 days you're much more likely to finish it.
I remember when I first discovered I could do this, and I immediately
started plotting out all the wonderful novels I was going to crank out.
Surely if I could write one novel in a month, then I could do six to nine in
a year. This sort of extrapolation sounded plausible, but I didn't factor
burnout into this equation.
We're not machines, and even if we were, even machines break down
under continuous usage. Smart writers approach the process just like smart
famers. They understand that you need to leave your creative fields fallow
for some seasons, in order to let the soil mature for future plantings (Note:
I have no idea if that's true about farming, since the only thing I know
about farming comes from a plethora of fantasy novels I've read).
You need to set realistic goals that won't kill you, and will keep writing
FUN. This is critical. If you stop enjoying writing, it may as well be any
other job you've hated in your life. For this reason, I set my pace at four
books a year, two longer 100-120k novels and two 65-75 shorter novels in
an easier first person series.
Changing up what I'm writing makes what I'm doing a lot more fun than
cranking through a single series would be, something I see Brandon
Sanderson do very, very well. This, more than anything else, has helped
me conquer the dreaded burnout beast, but I've added the other tools listed
below. Each is designed to make the process enjoyable and rewarding,
which keeps me coming back to the keyboard day after day.

Writing Socially
Writing socially can benefit you in countless ways. When I say writing
socially, I don't mean going to a coffee shop to chat with other writers. I
believe that's a terrible idea, and the few times I tried it the results were
disastrous. I still remember going to a coffee shop with two other 'writers'
I knew from my day job. The idea was that each of us would sit near each
other and work on our respective scenes. At the end of the evening we'd
talk about what we'd written and compare word counts. My total word
count for the first night was 68. Why? All the other two writers wanted to
do was talk and drink coffee, and their collective word count was zero. My
68 words were written in the time it took them to get their coffee and sit
down, then I didn't write again for the rest of the evening.
That's not to say that writing in a coffee shop is bad, or even that
writing with other writers in a coffee shop is bad. As long as you're all
there to write, and not to socialize. Writing socially should motivate, not
distract.
I've found that easiest to do with social media, which I suspect may be
true for many of you since many writers are introverts like me. We're
fortunate enough to live in the information age, and taking advantage of
social media can be rewarding in a lot of ways. It's not just motivational,
or even competitive. It's fun and you can find people that will support you
when you're having one of the dark days every writer faces.
There are a number of writing forums out there, from the Writer's Cafe
at Kboards to Absolute Write. Join them. Make friends. Talk to other
writers. These relationships will benefit you for the rest of your career,
and other writers can help your motivation just as you'll help theirs.
 I also belong to a private Facebook group with about 25 other authors.
We regularly do writing sprints where several of us will begin at the same
time and write for a half hour. At the end of the sprint you return to the
thread and post your word count. Then we all clap each other on the back
and do it again.
These sprints have raised our WPH and WPD, because we're
accountable to each other. No one wants to be in last place, and when you
know that you're going to have to post the results of your sprint at the end
of a half hour you're much more motivated to write your ass off for that 30
minutes. I HIGHLY recommend doing group writing sprints via social
media, or in a coffee shop if you can find other motivated local writers.
This can be done with Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or your social media
drug of choice. The setting doesn't matter, only the results. As long as all
members are keeping each other accountable you are much more likely to
hit your WPH and WPD goals.

Gamification
If you aren't familiar with the term gamification, don't worry; I'll
explain what it means. The term is hotly debated in the neuroscience
community, but it's being used by many companies to shape our behavior.
Allow me to explain.
Odds are good you use Facebook, Twitter or at the very least email,
right? If so you're familiar with the little red badges that signify
notifications. If you're like me your response is oooh, there's something
new to check! This happens most often while standing in line at the
grocery store, waiting for my soup in the microwave, or of course in the
bathroom. I am compelled to check my smart phone all the damn time.
Why is this?
Each time you experience pleasure your brain places a marker which
measures the circumstances leading up to that moment. If it detects these
circumstances again it realizes 'Hey, this felt good last time. It will
probably feel good this time too.' It responds by flooding you with a
chemical called dopamine. Dopamine doesn't necessarily give you
pleasure, but instead prompts you to engage in the behavior that led up to
pleasure last time.
 In practical terms it works like this: You received an email from a girl
or guy you were crushing hard on. That email told you they felt the same
way, and in that moment you were on top of the world. Now whenever you
think about email your brain fires off that dopamine and you're compelled
to check it. This is why you'll constantly open your phone to see if there's
anything new on Facebook, Twitter or your social media drug of choice.
Something good might happen, so here comes the dopamine.

Why Games Are Addictive

Large game companies figured out how to trigger dopamine rushes, and
used these principles to create mass-multiplayer games like World of
Warcraft. Players will spend 8-12 hours a day clicking away in a virtual
world, because the game has been engineered to trigger dopamine rushes.
At first your character gains levels frequently, which is a pleasurable
experience. As time goes on it takes longer and longer to gain a level, but
players keep grinding away because their brains continue to release
dopamine in a vain effort to recapture the pleasure they experienced.
This is why MMOs are so addictive, and they're not the only type of
games to harness this technique. Are you familiar with Candy Crush?
2048? Angry Birds? Every last one is using dopamine to keep you playing.

How does knowing this help you?

Dopamine releases can be attached to positive behaviors. We're now
seeing apps like Fitbit gamify fitness, and they do it in two ways. First,
they provide achievements for reaching milestones. Instead of getting that
shiny new epic sword in World of Warcraft you get a badge for walking
10,000 steps in a single day. You get similar badges for losing weight or
for climbing a certain amount of stairs, and before you know it your brain
is rewarding you for positive behaviors. It certainly works on me. I haven't
played an MMO in years, but I log in to Fitbit every day to obsessively
check my stats.

Social Proof and Competition

 Game and social media companies figured out another huge behavioral
marker in humans. We're inherently tribal, and are driven by a
subconscious need to be significant in our tribe. In MMOs this means
being really good at raiding or killing other players in arenas. It means
having the best epic loot, or the coolest new mount. You gain significance
by excelling in whatever way is measured by the shared activity. In social
media it can mean getting the most likes or comments on your posts. In
Fitbit this means dominating the leaderboard among your friends or your
local area. This competitive principle will often get people to do things
they'd never even consider, like sitting in front of a computer for twenty
straight hours to be the first to unlock some cool new gear. Nuts, right?

What does all this have to do with writing?

Using apps like Fitbit to encourage positive behavior made a lightbulb
go on in my head. If it works for fitness, why wouldn't it work for writing?
Every writer I know wants to crank out more words daily. Most of us are
highly competitive. What if you had an app that rewarded you for writing?
What if hitting word goals or having a seven-day writing streak triggered
the same rush of dopamine that checking Facebook does? I took a quick
look around and found that no one had tapped into this. So I did it myself.
That's how I wrote the 5,000 Words Per Hour book, and why I developed
the companion 5KWPH app.
You can use it to post your sprints to Facebook or twitter, and you have
the ability to monitor your own progress. That means you're competing
against the best competitor in the world...yourself. Even if you don't have
the app, you can still leverage the principle. Find or create a writing
community, and encourage some friendly competition between writers.
Lift each other up and help each other improve!
Odds are good you're familiar with NaNoWriMo, but for those who
aren't it refers to National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write
50,000 words in a month, and it sounds absolutely daunting to most new
writers. That's a perfect example of how gamification can spur your
motivation to write. You have a fixed start date (November 1st) and end
date (November 30th), and a clearly defined goal (50,000 words). You're
writing socially alongside hundreds of thousands of your peers, and more
importantly you're competing against yourself.
 Exercise #10- Reward Yourself
Join the herd. Pick at least one forum you aren't currently going to.
Make an account there, and post an introduction thread. If you aren't a
member of the Writer's Cafe at Kboards I'd recommend that one to start. If
you are then you can choose anywhere from Reddit to Absolute Write. Get
involved!

Bonus: Convince writers in your community to start running writing

sprints. If they already are, then join in!
Chapter 11- Mindset

So what the hell is a chapter about mindset doing in a book about

writing speed?
I saved the best for last, and I did it for a damn good reason. Many
people who picked up this book are not serious about their writing. Odds
are good it will sit on their Kindle, phone, or desk and they'll never pick it
up. Some might read a couple chapters, then put the book down and never
practice anything it teaches.
You, on the other hand, have read all the way to the end. Here's your
reward. This chapter, if taken to heart, will have a more profound effect on
your life than the rest of the book put together. What is this brilliant pearl
of wisdom?
Mindset. Is. Everything.
You may have heard this before. After all, every self-help guru on the
planet spouts off about it. But you know what? It's true. Here's a little test
you can run if you'd like to verify it yourself. Contact the most successful
person you know and ask them what their stance is on mindset. I'm betting
that not only will they have a great deal to say about it, but they'll tell you
it's critical to their success.

How Mindset Changed My Life

I've kept this book lean and haven't shared a lot of personal anecdotes,
despite the fact that every similar book on the subject goes on at length
about the author's own life. I made the conscious decision not to focus too
much on me, because I know what you really care about are the skills that
will propel you to the next level. I'm breaking that pattern now, because I
want you to understand just how important mindset is.
Five years ago I was nearly a hundred pounds heavier. I hadn't dated in
several years, and honestly believed I'd be forever alone. I lived with
several other roommates in a disgusting apartment that I was embarrassed
to have guests visit. My job paid me a paltry $12 an hour (very low for
California) and not only did I hate it, but every month I sank further into
debt because I couldn't quite make ends meet. Every day I had thoughts of
suicide, and each day it was harder to get up.
In the evenings I'd get high, play video games, and sit around with my
roommates talking about how the world was screwed and that it would
never, ever get any better. I was surrounded by negativity. Hell, I wallowed
in it...and it was killing me. Yeah, I know, I know. Quite a sob story. So
where am I going with this and what does it have to do with you?
I had a Shawshank Redemption moment where I realized I needed to
either get busy living, or get busy dying. Something had to change, or
there was no point in continuing my bleak existence.
The very next day I started reading self-help books. The first one that
made an impact was Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence
People, which convinced me to join Toastmasters. For those not familiar,
Toastmasters is a public speaking organization where you give timed
speeches designed to teach you better social and leadership skills.
I saw immediate improvement, which convinced me that change was
possible. Next, I tackled my career. I was sick of my soul-crushing
collections job, and I was determined to get out of it. So I taught myself to
write apps for the iPhone, and I doubled my salary. Within a year I
doubled it again.
Somewhere along the way I got tired of being 300 pounds, so I set out
to get in shape. I dropped a staggering ninety pounds and got into the best
shape of my life. I met the girl of my dreams.
So what does this all have to do with writing? In 2013 that became my
next focus and I started cranking out novels. To date I've published three,
and I have two more slated to come out this year. That's an average of one
novel every three months, and I'm developing apps, writing non-fiction
and have a full time job at a startup- all at the same time.
None of that would have been possible without shifting my mindset,
which I'll explain in detail in the next section.

Becoming Positive
The human mind is a powerful weapon, largely because of the way our
sub-conscious operates. If you tell it to do something, then your
subconscious will happily churn away until that thing becomes a reality.
The easiest way to tell your mind to do something is by believing it's true,
but that can be a double-edged sword. Have you ever gotten upset when a
friend betrayed you or did something hurtful, then later found out that you
were wrong? Your mind and body still reacted to the way you thought your
friend had behaved, even though it wasn't true. This is an example of the
power your brain wields.
For most of my adult life I held a lot of limiting beliefs. I'd never make
it as a writer. I'd never be skinny. I'd never meet the kind of woman I
dreamed about, and even if I did why would she be into me? Ever since I'd
been a teenager I'd been accumulating these beliefs. Some of them were
given to me by my well intentioned family: 'you can't be an author, you
need a real job'. Some of them were wholly self-created by one failure or
another, such as gaining weight and believing that I'd never be able to lose
it because of genetics.
When I started reading the self-help books I mentioned above, it opened
up a whole sea of possibilities. These books claimed that I could still be
and do just about anything, but doing so would take a great deal of time
and discipline. So I decided to test it out. I set a goal and worked my ass
off to attain it. This particular goal was something I'd long since
convinced myself was impossible. I wanted to become a decent dancer. Up
until that point I'd been terrified to get out on the dance floor, and it took a
lot of alcohol and the insistence of a beautiful woman to drag me out
there. So if I could disprove this belief I'd held my entire life it would
force me to re-examine everything.
I started practicing dancing. A girl I met on OkCupid belonged to a
dance studio, and she started bringing me to her weekly group lessons.
Within a few weeks, I was confident enough to commit to joining a flash
mob. Six weeks later, we danced at San Francisco city hall with 500 other
people on camera. I wasn't the best person out there, but I knew the steps
and I had a blast doing it. This whole episode taught me the value of a
positive mindset. I believed it was possible, I worked hard and achieved
my goal.
All of a sudden the things I'd believed out of reach like a six figure
salary or a published novel were suddenly possible. The name of the book
that changed my mind? Talent is Overrated. I highly recommend it if
you're looking for something to jumpstart you on the path to a positive
mindset.
 The Sum of Your Friends
One of the sayings I'd heard throughout my life was that you are the
sum of your five closest friends. I had no idea what that really meant until
I began making drastic changes in my life. When I started losing weight,
many of my friends sabotaged that progress by telling me to have 'just one
more piece of pizza' or 'one more beer.' I very quickly realized that on
some level they weren't comfortable with my growing success, because it
forced them to question their own lives. They watched me go from making
12 dollars an hour to a six figure income, and if I could do it why couldn't
they?
The answer was they could, but it would take the same sustained and
monumental level of effort I'd put in. I worked twelve hours or more every
single day for years before it really began to pay off, but when it paid off it
paid off big. Overnight success isn't. It takes time, focus, and dedication to
achieve great things.
The more I've achieved, the more I've realized that there are often toxic
people in your life holding you back. If you begin cranking out novel after
novel, many people in your life will begin to treat you differently. They
won't be comfortable with the level of success you're attaining, but that's
okay. What you need to do is cut out the worst offenders (those who
actively sabotage you) and replace them with a new support group. There
are hundreds of successful authors all over the internet. I mentioned a few
places to meet them in the last chapter. All you have to do is start
networking with the kind of people who have the success you're after. They
will support and nurture you on your quest to become a writing machine,
and at the end of the day that's why you bought this book, right?

Raising Your Standards

I can sum up all the changes I've mentioned in three words: raise your
standards. Your standard of friend. Your standard of mindset. Your
standard for the number of words you're capable of in an hour or a day.
Think back to where you were in high school. What were your goals? If
you're like me, things like getting a car and moving into your first dingy
apartment were high on the list. As you grew older those standards
changed. Maybe you wanted a car that didn't stall out and have pieces
falling off. Maybe you wanted an apartment that didn't resemble a
demilitarized zone because you had six roommates. Over time your
standards changed.
Sometimes those standards have gone down. When we were in high
school we were taught that we could pretty much conquer the world. After
we got into 'the real world' many of us let our dreams die, because
everyone around us said those dreams weren't realistic. Yet here you are
writing a novel (or non-fiction book). Maybe you've already published one
or more, and if not you soon will if you follow the program in this book.
Wherever you are the trick to hitting the next goal is all about making
sure your standards are higher today than they were yesterday.

Visualize the Future

I'm almost done with my spiel about mindset. I hope it's an area you're
interested in, because if you give it some time and practice it will change
your life. Especially this last step. It's used by the best athletes in the
world, because quite frankly it works.
As I mentioned earlier your sub-conscious is at work 24-7 doing exactly
what you tell it to do. You feed it instructions by visualizing the things that
you want as if they had already happened. Want to be the next Stephen
King? Spend some time daydreaming about cashing a check for fifty
million dollars. Jim Carey did. He even wrote out the check to himself and
put it in his wallet.
Imagine an appearance on The Daily Show. What would your life be
like if you sold ten million books?
Spend some time thinking about scenarios like this, and let your
imagination run wild. You don't have to know anything about how you're
going to get there, because your sub-conscious is going to do a lot of the
work. It does so by tapping into something called the Reticular Activating
System, a part of your brain you use every day.
Have you ever bought a certain kind of car or clothing and now you see
it everywhere? Those cars were always there, but you didn't notice them
because they weren't significant. Once you bought one your RAS
identified it as important and now points it out whenever your sub-
conscious sees it. That car went from background noise to important data.
 When you tell your brain that you want to become a best-selling author
anything that will make that a reality suddenly becomes significant. You'll
notice opportunities and tools that you never would have seen before, all
through the simple act of daydreaming about what you want to achieve.

Conclusions
I could go on at length about mindset for an entire book, and frankly I
will at some point. It's an incredibly powerful tool in every profession,
particularly one like ours where we have to create on demand. Not only
that, but we have to self-motivate, because unless you're working for a
company no one forces you to sit down and write. Give some thought to
what I had to say in this chapter, because it can really serve you if you let
it.

Exercise #11- Mindset

Get out a pen and paper or fire up a text document. Write down where
you see yourself in five years if everything went perfectly. You've sold X
million books, gotten movie deals...whatever your dream is. What kind of
car do you drive? Where do you live? How is your life different? Write
several paragraphs about what you want.

Bonus: After you've completed the above spend 10 minutes thinking

about it. You can do this during your commute, or in the shower. It doesn't
matter. SEE where you want to be. The results may shock you.
Where to go from here?

Congratulations my friend, you've completed this book. I know it's not

terribly long, but we covered a lot of information. There are a whole bunch
of exercises, and you may not have done any of them. If you're like me
you may have read straight through and said you'll do them later.
If that's the case I urge you to continue to the next page where I've
compiled all the exercises. Either download the spreadsheet I've created or
the 5kWPH app if you have an iPhone or iPad. Then do the work. This
book will be useless to you unless you sit down at the keyboard and
actually crank out words.
Conduct at least one sprint every day. Track the results. You WILL
improve, and in a month you'll be much faster than you are now. In three,
you'll look back at today as the day that changed your writing life forever.
Or set this book aside and start looking for other books, podcasts, or
videos about writing. If you do the latter, you can read all about success,
but you'll never achieve it. That takes work. A lot of work. Work I'm
hoping you're willing to commit to, because if you are you will amaze
yourself.

I hope you've found this book helpful. If you have I encourage you to
sign up to the mailing list, and to leave a review wherever you bought it.
As most of you know, they're critically important to the success of any
author's books.

Either way, I'd like to thank you for sharing your time with me. I'd love
to hear from you, so feel free to contact me at chris@chrisfoxwrites.com
to tell me how the program is working out for you, to make suggestions, or
just to connect =)

Sincerely,
Chris Fox
Exercises

Below you'll find all the exercises listed throughout the book for easy
reference. If you'd like a PDF copy you can download or print out the
exercises here.

Exercise #1- Micro-sprints

This exercise will be ongoing. Create a daily reminder in whatever app
you use (a calendar program, the reminder app on your smartphone or any
other method will work). This reminder is for a 5 minute writing sprint
every day. You'll record your start time, end time and number of words
written every day for the first week. Most importantly, you will record
your WPH as explained above.
That doesn't mean you can't write for longer periods, but we're starting
small. Once you've mastered 5 minutes for a week we'll take it to 10.
Eventually you'll reach 30, which is my optimum sprint length. You may
find that yours is longer or shorter, but this exercise is the first step in
answering that question.
If you've downloaded the 5KWPH app it will take care of all this work
for you, or you can use the spreadsheet I created if you don't have an
iPhone or iPad.

Exercise #2- Set up your tortoise enclosure

Take a good look at your schedule and pick a time block that you're
going to devote to writing. You need to define a start time and end time,
and you need to pick a place where you will not be disturbed. If there is a
chance of being disturbed, inform your friends, family or co-workers that
you need privacy. Get some headphones if needed. Once you've mentally
defined this space, actually write out a contract with yourself. 'I will write
at my computer from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. every day.' Writing things
down has a powerful psychological effect, and makes them real to your
subconscious in a way simply thinking them does not.

Bonus: Wake your ass up a half hour earlier than usual and use that as
the time boundary for your tortoise enclosure.

Exercise #3- Set up your tracking

This exercise is probably the easiest in the entire book. Download my
app, my spreadsheet, or both. If you don't like either then create your own
as mentioned above. Once you've done so, record the micro sprint(s)
you've already done, and continue to track them for the rest of the week.
At the end you'll have a graph showing your words per hour, and trust
me when I say that they will go up over time. Look at your words per hour.
Now set a goal to double that amount in the next week. If that doesn't
sound hard enough, then triple it. Your goal should really stretch your
abilities, and it's okay to fall short. Even if you do, you'll still have made
progress!

Exercise #4- Clear Your decks

Make a list of all the common distractions you face on a daily basis
when writing. Keep this list handy, because you're going to continue to add
to it as you read this book.
Now add a column labeled solution. Go down to each item and
brainstorm a solution until you have a method of canceling out every
distraction that normally prevents you from getting in the writing mode.
Continue until you've added every distraction you can think of, and also
added a solution for each.
Now get a sticky note, or something else you can use as a reminder.
Attach that to the bottom center of your monitor. Every time you look at
that sticky during a writing sprint it will remind you to stay focused. It's
okay if you get distracted. Just come back to the writing as quickly as
possible.
 Exercise #5- Plot your first scene
Define a scene using the drill down section, then let that scene play
through your mind. Visualize your characters, the action and the
resolution.

Bonus: Create a story timeline for your novel, defining the inciting
incident and both doorways. Add an awesome ending.

Exercise #6- Full Sprints

Set a 20 minute timer and write for the entire time. Do not stop for any
reason. If you get stuck, that's okay. Refer to your scene notes if you need
to. Once you are done, record your total words. Well done! Record your
sprint in your tracker and note your words per hour. This is day one. In a
few weeks that number will be significantly higher!

Exercise #7- Increase Your Speed

Download a typing program and use it to figure out your current typing
speed. Set a goal of where you want that speed to be in a month, then
check in weekly to see what your speed is.

Bonus: Download Dragon Dictate (or the PC equivalent) and force

yourself to use it for one week. It will change your life forever.

Exercise #8- Editing Sprint

Perform a content edit on the scene you created in the last chapter. Yes,
this breaks the 'write the entire draft before you edit' rule, but for the sake
of this exercise it will work. Plus, here's the twist. Either add a new
character to the scene you wrote, or change something fundamental about
a character (gender or age). Record your WPH.
 Bonus: Do a proofread edit for the same scene. Record your WPH for
both edits and note the difference. How does your scene look at the end?
How much time did you spend writing and editing the entire thing?

Exercise #9- Measure Your Progress

Take a look at your graphs in the app or the spreadsheet. What is your
current WPH and WPD for each category? Now set a goal for where you'd
like them to be in 30 days and enter that into the tool you're using to track
your progress.

Exercise #10- Reward Yourself

Join the herd. Pick at least one forum you aren't currently going to.
Make an account there, and post an introduction thread. If you aren't a
member of the Writer's Cafe at Kboards I'd recommend that one to start. If
you are then you can choose anywhere from Reddit to Absolute Write. Get
involved!

Bonus: Convince writers in your community to start running writing

sprints. If they already are, then join in!

Exercise #11- Mindset

Get out a pen and paper or fire up a text document. Write down where
you see yourself in five years if everything went perfectly. You've sold X
million books, gotten movie deals...whatever your dream is. What kind of
car do you drive? Where do you live? How is your life different? Write
several paragraphs about what you want.

Bonus: After you've completed the above spend 10 minutes thinking

about it. You can do this during your commute, or in the shower. It doesn't
matter. SEE where you want to be. The results may shock you.
About the Author

By day I am an iPhone developer architecting the app used to scope

Stephen Colbert's ear. By night I am Batman. Okay maybe not. One can
dream though, right?

I've been writing since I was six years old, and started inflicting my work
on others at age 18. By age 24 people stopped running away when I
approached them with a new story and shortly thereafter I published my
first one in The Rifter.

Wait, you're still reading?

Ok, the facts I'm supposed to list in a bio. As of this writing I'm 38 years
old and live just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in the beautiful town of
Mill Valley. If you're unsure how to find it just follow the smell of self-
entitlement. Once you see the teens driving Teslas you'll know you're in
the right place.

I live in a tiny studio that I can cross in (literally) five steps, and don't own
an oven. But you know what? It's worth it. I love developing iPhone apps
and if you want to work in San Francisco you accept that the rent for a tiny
place costs more than most people's mortgage.
If you and about 2 million other people start buying my books I promise to
move out of Marin to a house in the redwoods up in Guerneville. No
pressure. Wait, that's a lie. Pressure.