I Wrote A 103,000 Word Novel In 16 Days With This One Simple Trick!

That title is a bit hyperbolic. It was a reorganization of my workflow, and I think it would be difficult for someone without my level of experience to do it.

But! On to the details.

Around April and May I felt the gears of my brain starting to grind to a halt. It was getting increasingly difficult to get anything done. Some of it was that there was a lot going on in Real Life, but while some of it was onerous, none of it was that bad.  (Granted, I did unexpectedly travel to five different states in one week in May, but still.)

After thinking about it for a while, I realized the problem – I was multitasking too much.

Every other job I’ve had in my life, ever, ran off an “interruption-based workflow”, or what HR managers like to euphemistically call “multitasking in a dynamic work environment”, which meant it was my job to get interrupted constantly. I was really good at this, and carried it over into writing. But it had gotten to the point that I had too many different projects going on at once, and they were all distracting from each other. For example, I originally intended to release each MALISON book at the same time as the final four SEVENFOLD SWORD books, but that turned out to be nonviable. I enjoyed writing the CLOAK & GHOST books, but they turned out to be a distraction from actually writing more Nadia & Caina books.

I needed to focus on the “core objective” – writing full-length novels. So, after the last MALISON book was done, I decided no more short novels like CLOAK & GHOST or MALISON, short stories only in special circumstances, and to drastically cut back on any side projects. I also really needed to focus on one thing at time.

To help with that, I tried something called the Pomodoro Technique (“Pomodoro” is apparently Italian for “tomato”) that I’ve seen floating around various writer forums for a while. Basically, the idea with Pomodoro is that you work on one task and just that task for 25 minutes with no distractions – no email, phone, nothing. Then when the 25 minutes is over, you take a 5 minute break, and then repeat.

It worked really well for me. I was able to write between 1200 to 1500 words per 25 minute block, which drastically upped my daily word count and gave me more time to deal with anything going on in Real Life. Because of that, I wound up spending less time writing while actually getting more writing done. This led to some surreal and hilarious moments. One night I played the MASTER OF ORION remake for 70 minutes, which left me feeling deeply uneasy because I felt like I should be working on something instead of wasting time with games. Except I had already written 8000 words that day! Numerous Real Life tasks had been completed! From a productivity standpoint, not only had the day not been wasted, it had been extremely successful. So why not play computer games for a while?

Overall, I averaged about 6400 words per day while writing DRAGONTIARNA, as opposed to 4300 for SEVENFOLD SWORD: SOVEREIGN, and I even got some writing done on days when I wouldn’t have otherwise because the Pomodoro blocks are so compact.

So, henceforth I’m going to use Pomodoro for writing new novels.

I’m not sure someone else would have the same dramatic results as I did. I already had a lot of experience before writing novels before I tried Pomodoro.  I don’t think anyone can ever say they’ve really mastered fiction writing, but DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS was my hundredth novel. I’m definitely not a novice. That said, if you’re having trouble focusing while writing (or doing any other concentration-based task), Pomodoro might be worth a try.

-JM