Have you read Rachel Aaron’s book 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love yet? You really should– it’s great.
Shortest. WU post. Ever!
Just kidding. But not about my recommendation of Rachel Aaron’s book, it really is well worth checking out. Now just to be clear, I don’t know Rachel at all, never met her, never even e-mailed with her. I hadn’t heard of her or her book until another author whose blog I follow mentioned that she was giving the strategies recommended in the book a try. This was six months ago, just after we’d had our third baby, and frankly anything that promised to help me write more efficiently in the obviously limited time I had sounded well worth looking into. So I downloaded the book and dove in.
It’s been awesome. Seriously. In the six months since my sweet baby boy was born, I’ve written two full-length books and am just this month finishing up a third. I wouldn’t say that’s entirely due to having read 2k to 10K, since there are so many other factors that go into a creative streak. (If anyone has others to share, let me know; I would LOVE to be that productive all the time). But (I know I’m sounding kind of like an infomercial here, but it’s really true) the strategies Rachel recommends have helped hugely for sure.
I admit that I was skeptical at first of the title. 10K in a day? I’m not sure I could ever write a book that fast. I’m not sure if I did write a book that fast it would be worth asking anyone, even my mother, to read it. Every writer is different, and I’m sure there are those who can write faster and still write well. But I’ve found I have to live with my characters and my story for a certain amount of time before I really understand them and can do them justice. If you feel the same, I completely understand that. Good stories take time. But the book isn’t about trying to boost your output willy-nilly up to 10k, forget about quality, it’s really not. I’m not currently writing 10K a day or anything like, but the strategies have helped me consistently write 2K in the same amount of time I used to take to write more like 1,000 words. That’s still a speed I’m comfortable with, but it is also helping me finish the books twice as fast. More importantly, the techniques don’t just bolster your word count. I mean, we could all just add a minimum of 2 adjectives to modify every noun we write and call it good. (He sat on the chair. He sat on the big, red chair. Look! More words!) More words isn’t the point; for me, the strategies really do make the writing better.
Okay, so what does the book actually say? Rachel’s strategies are really simple– so simple I was kind of smacking myself in the head and wondering why, 10 books into my career as an author, I’d never thought of that. But that makes them all the easier to implement. Here are my two favorites: [Read more…]
