C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

09/16/2022 • 1:54 PM 1

12 Tips to Write More

I’ve written, co-written, and worked as a book doctor for a long time. People have asked, how do you keep your ass in the chair long enough to be that productive? I do have a robot in my watch that tells me to get up and move around once an hour so I don’t become pudding. I set alarms to get me to bed and get me to work, too. Setting alarms is not just for nagging you to get out of bed.

Here are my simple suggestions for increasing your word count:

Clear your workspace of distractions. (I have a blanket fort because I like to hide.)
Clear your calendar so you have dedicated time to write. Be specific about when and where.
Get excited about the current scene you’re writing. If it’s not exciting for you, it’s not exciting for the reader. If that’s the case, maybe it’s good you’re dragging your feet on writing it.
Set a timer and, especially for that first draft, get the words down as fast as you can while you race the clock. You can accomplish a lot in short bursts.
Shut off the internet so you focus on the job rather than checking out the latest on Huffington Post and Twitter news. The world’s ending. There, saved you some time.
Do not wait for inspiration. Inspiration strikes at the keyboard, not while you’re playing Call of Duty.
Since the hardest part is starting, tell yourself you’ll just write for ten minutes. Once you start swinging that hammer, you’ll get caught up in doing more damage.
Take notes between writing sessions so you’ll have prompts when you’re back in the saddle.
Drop your writing session on a note that’s easy to pick up again.
Accountability is helpful. That could be just you counting your streaks in an app or on a spreadsheet, getting a writing partner, or finding a writing group. Tracking and reporting keeps you writing. My mastermind group has a writing room in Slack which tends to get me going.
Visualize your success and how good it will feel to publish a book. You can’t get there without the homework part of being a writer, so do the thing.
Picture the sad faces of all your haters when you hit it big. Cackle about it as you type. Motivation comes and goes, but fear of failure, terror of poverty, and ambition born of spite are strong emotions.

What keeps you at the keyboard in this ridiculous, capricious business?

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. I write apocalyptic epics with heart and killer crime thrillers with muscle. Find links to all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

Filed under: writing, writing advice, writing tips, books, books by Robert Chazz Chute, do the thing, how to write faster, how to write more, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, writing

01/29/2015 • 10:35 AM 0

#SPRT: Write more, faster (plus, a secret identity is revealed)

Tonight, Thursday January 29th, 2015 on the Self-publishing Roundtable, our guest will be super-author and publisher Mat Morris. He types 100-150 words a minute. He leaps over crazy goals in a single bound.

He’s the nut who wrote 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo IN A SINGLE DAY.

Then he did it twice more!

It’s time to reveal the truth about Mat Morris.

Mat Morris is The Flash!

Clearly, this is the right guy to talk to about productivity. We’ll also cover cool tech tools, making metrics work for you and how to use your limited writing time most efficiently. Everybody needs to see this one.

Mat’s also doing cool experiments, naked and in public.

When he broke the code on writing NaNoWriMo within 24 hours, he livestreamed it and invited the world to watch. This year, he’s going to be doing the same thing all the time, making his writing life transparent. (Ahem, that’s what I meant by naked.)

Mat Morris really breaks down the process on how you can write more books this year by following his strategies, his tactics and his example.

I’ve been recruited as a guest host this week. My function is to…um…I think I’m supposed to make jokes with author Xavier Granville while Mat glowers at us. Author Michelle Read runs the chat room, fires your questions at the guest and generally looks concerned. This will be a fun one.

See you tonight at 10 PM EST!

~ The last All That Chazz Podcast under the old format is up. It’s over and yet (insert tired metaphor of a phoenix rising from the ashes) it isn’t over.

UPDATE: And now the new fast and fun incarnation of the podcast is up! I’m going back to my roots with the new format.

You can check out the podcast, old and new, at AllThatChazz.com and subscribe while you’re there for updates, ARCs and deals. Don’t forget, there’s also the Cool People Podcast which keeps rolling on at CoolPeoplePodcast.com. Make it a happening day, fellow babies!

Filed under: author platform, how to write faster, how to write more, mat morris, michelle read, NaNoWriMo, Podcast, productivity, rescuetime, Robert Chazz Chute, self-publishing roundtable, SPRT, The Flash, writers, writing, writing tools, xavier granville

11/08/2014 • 2:49 PM 5

#NaNoWriMo: How to make writing a novel easier than it looks

I write drafts for my novels at a rate of 1,000 words per hour. I can string more of those hours together if I plan ahead with a general outline, but I usually pants it rather than plot it.

**I think of my writing time in terms of word count and hours. Here’s why:**

When I wrote This Plague of Days, I didn’t think in terms of hours then. I didn’t budget my time or work to a word count like it was a job. I just put my head down and wrote and revised many times, stealing time here and there without a real schedule. I can’t tell you how long it took to write that epic saga because I went through so many revisions. Also, because my approach was haphazard, I wrote slower then. Though I worked from an outline, the project took longer than it could have.

I was buying into the meme that slow cooker writing was the only way, despite Stephen King’s suggestion that three months ought to do it (and look at the size of his books!) If I wrote that series now, the first draft would take about 300 hours of actual writing time. That’s less impressive than saying it took me years to write TPOD, but it’s more accurate.

(By the way, I just found out the This Plague of Days, Omnibus Edition has advanced to the second round in the Writer’s Digest Self-published Ebook Awards! Yay!)

When someone says it took them two years to write their first novel, that’s not true.

Two years equals 17,531.62 hours, including time spent sleeping, showering, goofing off, playing with children and pets and holding down a job, and procrastinating etc. Authors can write as fast or as slow as they’d like and each process is unique. However, there is no direct correlation between speed of production and quality. In fact, for the first draft, quality is nigh irrelevant.

**Quality comes with subsequent drafts.**

I find most of the jokes in the second revision and the plot problems to be fixed become clearer by the third revision.

Take NaNoWriMo, for example…

I’m planning 55,000 words for my current WIP. That means 55 hours for the first draft this month. As my current schedule allows, I’ll be done well before the NaNoWriMo deadline as long as I continue to protect my writing time.

Fifty-five hours sounds much less intimidating and more realistic, doesn’t it? What’s one work week to you? Forty-four hours? I approach my writing like a job. It’s a job I love, but there’s no waiting around for inspiration to come to me. I hunt inspiration down. Inspiration and efficiencies are habits learned by writing more and doing so consistently.

Sometimes the best laid plans go awry.

For my crime novel, Intense Violence, Bizarre Themes, I’d planned on looking for the exit to the book around 50,000 words and topping out at 55,000 words. It took me an extra 17,000 words to wrap it up neatly at 67,000 words. Still, 67 hours to a first draft sounds like much less drama than saying it took me a month. That’s just 16.7 hours per week to come up with a first draft. (For a while in the ’90s, that’s about as much time as I committed to watching television.)

I’d give you a measurement of editing and revision times if I had them, but that varies too widely depending on the book. For instance, I’m putting my time travel novel on hold because I’m not happy enough with it yet to release it. I’ll come back to it in 2015. However, I expect to have my current WIP out in time for Christmas (assuming I still love it when I’m done.)

Write as slow as you want to or as fast as you can. It doesn’t have to be a job. Hobbies are good, too, so write at the pace you choose.

My point is, we don’t have to be drama kings and queens about the writing process. When you hear of writers putting out a lot of books fast, that’s not really quite as hard as many would lead you to believe. Writing is a time management issue first. The other skills required come into play after we commit to investing the hours.

But it can’t be good because it was written too fast!

Writers who cherish writing slowly have my utmost respect until they insist others write at their pace (and many people write much faster than I do.)

On the Road, Casino Royale, The Gambler, A Clockwork Orange, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and As I Lay Dying were written in less than six weeks. I wonder if any of those famous books were actually written in less time than that if the authors had tracked their hours.

Fast writers manage fear because they think about each book project in terms of a formula:

Word count goals + hours x perspiration (divided by distraction)

Prolific writers manage their time, that’s all. No drama. Inspiration usually arrives at the keyboard at about the same time we do.

Write. Revise. Edit. Enjoy throughout. (Now don’t tell anyone how easy it is to get to big word counts or they might start to think that writers aren’t special snowflakes!)

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute and I just published my 15th book. Imagine how many more I could have written if I hadn’t been sucked into the vortex of “Must See TV” back in the day.