Have you ever had a story brewing in your mind just waiting for you to get it written? You start to write and it feels like you just aren’t making progress. Your story is never going to be done if you only get 379 words written a day! You think, “Man, it’s going to take me like all year to write this book! I wish there was a faster way.”

It can be a challenge to get many words out in a day, even if you spend several hours working on it. Would you like to be able to increase your word count? Maybe double it or more? I did.

Let me show you how simple it can be.

1. Best Time

      Find your best time to write. You may have to do a little experimenting. Do you write better first thing in the morning? Right after lunch? The evening? Late at night? Or some other time?  For me that golden time began about 5:00 p.m. and ended around 9:15. (With a supper break in there, don’t worry.) I’ve tried writing other times during the day, but aside from now and then in the morning, I just can’t. And my mornings are so busy, I always feel like I need to go do other things.
      Find your Golden Time.

2. Guard It

      Once you find that time where you write best, guard it! Since I know that’s my best time to write, I’ve had to say no to things
that I would otherwise have jumped at. After all, if I’m going to be an
author, I have to have working hours just like anyone else. Now there
are times when I just can’t write then because of things, but evenings is
when I write. You won’t find me on fb during that time. (Oh, wait, I’m
not on fb anyway.) I try not to get distracted by the computer. (It does help when it’s on the other side of the room.)
      Guard That Time!

3. Where You Write

      Maybe you think that you can write anywhere, but let me make a guess that there is one place that you always work a little better in. It could be at the kitchen table with children running in and out. It could be in your bed by flashlight. Maybe you write best at the library or at a local coffee shop. For me, I write best beside my bed. I used to sit on it when I wrote, but I got tired of so much sitting and discovered, much to my astonishment, that I write better standing up.
      Find Your Place.

4. Keep Count

      How much do you write at a time? Do you know? Until I started keeping track, I didn’t know. I’d get a rough guess, but I really didn’t know. Once I started keeping track of the exact number of words, they began to increase. Don’t ask me why, I wasn’t doing anything different. Perhaps it was just a bit of competitiveness inside me saying, “Hey, if you write 23 more words you’ll have reached 600.” Now, before I write a word, I’ll write down how many words were in my document so I can find out exactly how many words I wrote when I stop.
      Start Counting!

5. Set A Goal

      Do you work well with deadlines? I don’t. I get really stressed by them. But a goal, isn’t a deadline. It’s just a, well, it’s a goal. Something to try for, something to keep me pressing on when I want to give up and go read a book. Last year I set a goal of writing 5,000 words a week. For me, that was ambitious because I usually wrote 300-500 words a day. But I tried. And for two months I was writing 8,000 words a week! Even now I try for 5,000 words though I haven’t gotten that many written very often this year. It’s something to strive for. There have been times when I want to give up and go read, but I’ll look at my weekly word count and realized that if I write 300 more words, I’ll have reached that goal and suddenly 300 doesn’t seem like so many.
      Set and Strive.

 

So, what about you? How have you increased your word count? Have you tried any or all of these things? Did you find something else that helps? I’d love to hear about it. If you try any or all of these ways,  I’d love to hear how they worked for you.