5 Ways to Maximize Your Writing Time

with guest Melissa Jagears.

I recently wrote a 98,295 word rough draft in 24 days. That’s an average of 4095 words a day and I’m pretty certain I didn’t write all 24 days. Could you do it? Sure you can, because I’m betting 90% of you find the rough draft process fun.

I HATE the rough draft process! Like, really, really. Like, hate, hate. It’s not so bad once I start, but for some reason starting on it every day feels like I’ve asked myself to walk into a room full of people with the bubonic plague.

So, if someone who can’t stand the rough draft can write more than 5000 words a day, I hope my tips will make those of you who love the creative flow of words exceed my abilities.

So here’s how to maximize your writing time:

1. Get Accountable 

Writing is money. If you aren’t writing productively during your set-aside times, you’re stealing time away from other projects that could be making or saving you money. Or if you’re not trying to make money, you could be doing something else fulfilling. If you have trouble not using your writing time wisely, make it hurt when you fail. If you don’t get your quota, give money to something you DON’T want to fund. Maybe you pay your crit partner every time you don’t write when you said you would, maybe you put it in a piggy bank for that boat your spouse doesn’t need but really, really wants and would be tickled to get the money out of you.

 Have you ever used #1k1h on Twitter or joined the #1k1hr Facebook Page? If you’d be embarrassed to let others know you spent your writing time watching youtube videos, tell someone you’re about to write for an hour so you’re accountable. Text that friend that’s always asking when you’ll finish your book and make yourself report back at the end of your time. Broadcast your writing time on social media and report back with numbers. Find whoever it is or whatever it is that will make you feel bad for not giving it your all and tell them you’re about to write before you do.

2. Know what’s next in your story.

So you’ve rearranged your life to write and perhaps announced you are about to write, but the cursor is doing nothing but blinking. Or maybe you started out of the gate well, but your fun idea has fizzled into hard work. How could you possibly write 5000 words a day when you can barely squeeze out 500?

Don’t write until you know what you’re going to write.

Is this a plotter vs. pantster thing I’m springing on you? Not really. You can do it both ways. But I will say ahead of time I’m a plotter and the more I plot, the faster I can produce, but I understand some just can’t see themselves doing anything but pantsting. But you know what? Plotters are pantsters, too. We start in the same place, either with an idea, premise, setting, or character that has intrigued us, and know nothing more than that. We all pants.


Now, there are plenty of fancy plotting methods you can do beforehand that can be helpful, but even if you wouldn’t touch a plotting worksheet with a ten foot pole, we all have to pants a plot. But why pants during the arduous rough draft portion where you have to balance dialog and narrative, add in setting, make words pretty, fill out the story world? Whether you are a pantster or a plotter, you can write a pre-rough draft that simply TELLS the story—pure telling, as if you’re spoiling the whole plot by telling a friend your book’s plot from beginning to end, sprinkled with brilliant bits of dialog, pretty setting tidbits, deep thoughts, jokes, etc. that come to you as you write it. Don’t waste your time on writing craft while trying to come up with a story. For A Love So True, I wrote out a 32,000 word pre-rough draft telling me the story. For the book at the beginning of this post that I wrote in 24 days, I spent two weeks writing a 50,000 word pre-rough draft (It had more subplots to juggle).

I hear a whole chorus of you going “WAIT! Wait, wait. A 50k word synopsis, you mean? That’s nearly a book! No way am I writing an entire book worth of words before I write an actual book.

Well, it doesn’t take very long to write 50k words when you care about nothing about them being good: ignore punctuation, grammar, making things sound pretty, writing craft. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but yourself. Just transcribe the movie in your head. It’s much faster to write a story when you aren’t worried about the writing craft whatsoever. When you do this, you can easily go back and add in the secret baby you didn’t know was in there until about 2/3 through the story by inserting a sentence or two instead of fixing the whole darn book. You can rearrange, chop, and add with no real pain.

Once you’re happy with how the story works, then you just cut the pre-rough draft into sections/chapters/scenes. When you start writing each day on your actual rough draft, cut and paste the bit you plan to write into your manuscript’s margin, and use it as a guide. You’ll know ahead of time all the red herrings you need to weave in, you’ll know what needs to be set up for what’s coming next, you know how your characters will act because you’ve already become acquainted with them. It is AMAZING how fast you can write when you can just glance toward the margin when you lose steam, and go “Oh yeah, this is where I bring in the funny joke/plot twist/villain!”

But, if you’re a true pantster and got the heebie jeebies from the “50k word pre-rough draft,” you can write a pre-rough draft as you go. Read what you wrote yesterday, put a track changes bubble in the margin where you left off, then in that bubble come up with what’s going to happen next by telling it to yourself. Using what you know of GMC and other writing craft knowledge, fiddle with the scene setup until you’re happy. If you’ve got writer’s block, go take a shower or jog and play it out in your head or whatever helps you think until you know what’s coming next, then come back, write it in your plan, THEN start the actual writing. 

Just to give you an idea of what this telling rough draft looks like, this is what I used to guide me as I wrote chapter one of A Love So True:

“Hero must fire his father’s manager of the glass plant (or whatever business [I didn’t decide until much later in the pre-rough draft]). conflict: He’s not as ruthless as his father, he’s not certain he wants to do it as his father thinks it should be done. Once he does so, the entire office staff walks out. He’s always depended on his secretary to help him with business messes and now he doesn’t have his or the one from the glass factory to help sort out his mess. He’s starving and disappointed about not knowing what to do next and is overwhelmed with the unfamiliar paperwork. So he decides to leave it for the day and find something to eat. But he’s not in a good area of town for that, he smells something he wants, but he’s ended up in the red light district, who was the guy who thought putting a glass factory here was a good idea? He sees a woman who doesn’t belong in the area. He can’t get food and leave her here, can he? Is she as lost as he was? He decides to follow her and she catches him spying on her. She’s not very forthright on why she’s there and she seems to have a weapon, his talking to her doesn’t seem to change her mind about leaving the area. And he finds this stubborn woman interesting. But she isn’t at all interested in him, but he follows her anyway to be safe and he’s still hungry. Once she seems safe he looks for food, wishing he wasn’t going to be stuck cleaning up a glass factory business mess so he could meet her again, but then, if he hopes this business venture will prove to his father what he needs to prove, he’s gotta spend his time in the hot factory anyway instead of hobnobbing with the locals.”

BUT don’t just think out your plan! Write it down. For two reasons: One, there’s just something about writing down a plan that makes it easier to see flaws and problems before you start the actual writing and realize it won’t work. And two, when you’re writing the actual rough draft, fiddling with dialog, interior monologue, setting, and all that, can cause you to forget where you’re headed. But if it’s written down, when you lose steam, you can glance at your pre-rough draft, jog your memory, and get back to chugging. If your actual writing took you on a better journey than what you had planned out, wonderful, but the plan will save you more often than not.

3. Find what makes you excited to write what comes next – If what you wrote in your pre-rough draft document or margin bubble doesn’t make you excited to write it….well, is your reader going to be excited to read it? Likely not. So if you aren’t bouncing in your chair with itchy fingers wanting to see how this scene will look “brought to life” then you need to enhance or rewrite the plan to include something that makes you excited to write it. Is there a funny scene you could throw in there? Did you forget to add conflict? Can you add some romantic tension? Can you up the stakes? Can you change the secondary character to be more interesting? Are you perhaps having them act out of character? Do you need this scene at all? Can you scrap it and add the necessary elements to the next scene you’ve planned that does make you excited? 

Don’t start writing something until you’re excited about it—I promise, the difference between writing excited and writing bored is light years different in word production. It’s better to spend extra time fiddling with the pre-rough draft plan to get excited about where you’re going than to trudge through writing it anyway.

4. Forget the research – Whoah? What? Are you telling me to write poorly researched work? Nope. But only stop your rough draft writing to look up things that will completely derail your story or cause huge rewrites if the research doesn’t back what you’re trying to do. Finding out if the word “flibbertigibbet” was used in your time period is not worth stopping for. Highlight and move on. If you’ve used a word several times in a row, mark it to look up in a thesaurus later. If you aren’t sure potatoes were in England in your time period, don’t look it up unless you’re writing a two page joke about potatoes you couldn’t possibly substitute with some other vegetable. Don’t stop to look up what designer dress a kid could buy for $2000 in New York for her prom, just put in a generic description of a dress, flag it to beef up later, and move on.

Research rabbit trails can suck away hours of your writing time. Don’t let small research bits stop your word count flow; deal with it in editing. Especially since sometimes, you’re going ax it out completely anyway.

5. Write, Write, Write

Now, perhaps 500 words are all you’ve ever written in a day and 5000 seems insane. It might be, but hopefully my tips will help you at least double your current word count. The best thing to do to become a faster, better writer is to write more. The more words you write, the more stories you wrestle into submission, the more familiar you get with your process, the more well-crafted words you labor to create, the easier the words come and the faster you can go.

For Writers: What tip or tricks can you share for making writing time productive? Readers: If you want to binge read a book, what drastic things do you do to squeeze in reading time?

Today Melissa is generously giving away a copy of A Love So True to one commenter. Winner announced in the next Weekend Edition. 

Evelyn Wisely has a heart for the orphans of Teaville and works at a local mansion that rescues children out of the town's red-light district and gives them a place to live. But her desire to help isn't limited to orphans. The owner of the mansion, Nicholas Lowe, is willing to help her try to get the women working in prostitution out of the district as well--if she can gain the cooperation and support of local businessmen to go against the rest of the community. 

David Kingsman has recently arrived in Teaville from Kansas City to help with one of his father's companies in town. While he plans on staying only long enough to prove his business merit to his father, he's shown interest in Evelyn's work and is intrigued enough by her to lend his support to her cause.


They begin with the best of intentions, but soon the complications pile up and Evelyn and David's dreams look more unattainable every day. When the revelation of a long-held secret creates a seemingly insurmountable rift between them, can they trust God still has a good plan for them despite all that is stacked against them?

Author Bio: Did Melissa Jagears mention she hates writing her rough draft? Well she does, but she forces herself to do so mostly in the wee hours of the morning. You’ll occasionally catch her in the #1k#1hr Facebook group because she just doesn’t want to write but would feel like a real dork if she didn’t hit 1000 words an hour in front of people on social media since it’s not that hard to hit 1000 words an hour when you have an exciting plan sitting right next to you in the document’s margin. She writes for Bethany House and the second book of her second series A Love So True is out right now.