2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love

I started keeping records. Every day I sat down to write, I would note the time I started, the time I stopped, how many words I wrote, and where I was writing on a spreadsheet

"Be excited about everything you write"

Everything. Remember, the core part of the writing triangle is knowledge. In day-to-day terms, this means knowing what you’re going to write before you write it, but in the bigger picture of your life as a writer, it means understanding your story choices on a deeper level. If you want your writing process to be fast and reliable, it’s not enough t

If I had scenes that were so boring I didn't want to write them, then there was no way anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn't love it, no one would.

The point I’m trying to make here is that when you let your characters make their own choices, they become real people who can tell you where they need to go. By making your character’s decisions and needs part of your plot right from the beginning, treating them as active participants in the novel rather than passengers on a rollercoaster to the c

Make a time line. I didn't have time lines for the first 4 Eli novels and OMG did it bite me in the ass. Lesson finally learned, I now make time lines not just for the events of the novel itself, but the important bits of history before it as well. I especially make sure to note the relative ages of all my characters and how long everyone's known e

Now, instead of treating bad writing days as random, unavoidable disasters to be weathered, like thunderstorms, I started treating them as red flags.

When a plot won't move forward, it's almost always because there's something I don't know about the characters or the world or why this event is actually happening.

A boredom check is where I think through my plot, imagining the story in my head as though it were a movie. There's no sound or dialog; I just go through the story, scene by scene, searching for slow spots, things that don’t make sense, or anywhere that seems to lag. If I can’t visualize something or I skip a scene, I stop and figure out why.