We're doing the hard science here. This book is not about how to be a more eloquent writer, how to be a better writer, or how to write more beautiful words. Other books are about that, and I'm the wrong person to go to for advice about beautiful phrasing.
I'm not a very eloquent writer. What I am is a very fast writer. So that's the goal we're focused on, and that's a goal that's very trackable. We want to see how many words you can accomplish in our critical timeframes.
We want to find the best writing strategy for you as an individual and unique writer. We want to discover the pattern that works best for you. Maybe for you dictation is slower, or maybe it's faster. I'm very interested to see how dictating this book plays out. Part of me thinks that dictating this book will be slower than writing by hand.
I'm very interested to see because I'm just doing recordings initially. I can only see how many minutes I record in each session. I will then use that data to get a rough estimate of my productivity.
I know that the average person speaks one hundred and fifty words per minute or less. What I don't know is how many words I speak per minute. I have measured how fast I speak. My number will probably be lower because there are pauses in between my different phrases that you can't see on your page. These moments where I'm thinking about what I want to say next exist in this recording, so I don't know yet if a ten-minute recording is 1500 words. Maybe I'm only generating eight hundred or a thousand words in these little blocks.
When I go back and I copy all these audio files to my computer and begin to transfer them to my dictation program, I will gather my first round of statistics. I will track words recorded per day and how many sessions I do. I want to track how many words are generated by my auto-transcription software.
I will then track how long it takes to convert this audio into readable text. Just transcribing a dictation isn't enough. I can't send out a stream of consciousness with no punctuation and say that the book is complete.
Dictating is so much faster than typing, but the editing process is crucial in determining if this is the best strategy for me going forward. I need to measure my writing speed and combine both the writing and entire editing process to see if dictation is faster than writing the whole book by hand.
I know that dictating directly to the computer is slower for me. Maybe if I complete the training process and spend six or eight weeks doing it, I'll get faster, but honestly, I hate it. If I'm going to dictate, I'd rather be outside like this, sitting here watching the sunset now.
(UPDATE: Since purchasing a new computer, dictating into my computer has become a breeze and is now very fast. The limitation when I first wrote this chapter was my three-year-old computer, not the software itself.)
I am sitting here "writing" a book in paradise. Because I have hard data, I can dial in my best work processes.
I'm willing to go first. I'm taking action that is hard and new for me so that you don't have to feel alone.
You need to do the same thing. Please track your progress and write down your numbers as we go through this adventure together.
41
The Harsh Truths of Tracking Your Progress
Let's be straight with each other; tracking gets old pretty fast. At first, it's easy to be excited about this process, but you will quickly reach a point where you are no longer excited by tracking. It's annoying to write down numbers every day, and you're going to be tempted to skip this step.
When this happens, it's very tempting to write down the numbers you think you deserve or to promise that you'll write down your numbers tomorrow. Please realize that this will hurt you for the rest of your writing career. If you start fudging numbers, it will slow you down, and it will decrease your effectiveness.
This data is not about impressing anyone; it's about achieving your goals as quickly as possible.
I love Scrivener because it makes tracking my goals so straightforward and automatic. Inside Scrivener, I set my daily and project word-count goals. These two goals are always on the side of my screen, tracking my progress.
I can watch the two little bars marching across the screen and getting closer and closer to one hundred percent. I love filling them in with more words. I know how many words I want to write for each little section.
20K a Day is the first time I've done a project without those numbers in front of me. It makes me nervous not to have those numbers in front me. I'm so used to seeing if I am effective and tracking my progress in real time.
Now the only measurement of my success is time. Will I be able to dictate this book in four days or less? How many hours of dictation does take me to write a book? These are all new things that I'm going to learn as I write this book.
Each little section of 20K a Day is a separate recording. Every subheading in every chapter of this book is a separate audio file. That's how I'm tracking my progress.
I can see how long each file is and eventually how many words there are. Then I can look at how long it takes me to edit that little section, so I will begin to acquire more data throughout this process.
Because I'm saving my work in a different way, I'm able to track and complete micro-goals. Micro-goals are a critical part of my fast writing technique, and they will come up again and again throughout this book.
Most of us don't save our writing projects into fifty different files. We don't have a separate word count from each day that we can review at the end of the project.
We forget how many words we wrote yesterday and the day before. You have probably never kept a journal of how many words you have written in the past.
When we write, we don't do that, do we? We keep all of our writing in one big file. At best you know how long the final project was and roughly how long you worked on it. But you don't know how many days you worked on the project or what time of day you did most of the writing.
We need to track consistently and efficiently. When you stop tracking, you lose your effectiveness. If you're someone who is training at the gym and you are writing down your numbers, as soon as you start slacking off with your tracking, you slowly start slipping to the point where you stop going to the gym altogether.
I know this because it happens to me. Every time I stop tracking my numbers, the quality of my workouts diminishes. If I'm not checking the clock when I'm riding my exercise bike, I'll only do twelve minutes instead of twenty. We imagine we've done more than we have when we stop tracking.
It's critical to keep this in mind, so you have the success you deserve. You're going to have good and bad days. There's a temptation when you have a bad day not to write it down, to pretend it never happened.
Don't do that. No one's ever going to see your numbers unless you decide to share them. I'm not going to make you email me your numbers, and I'm not going to make you put them somewhere public where people can judge you and see if you had a good or bad day.
There are plenty of benefits to having a public project and getting feedback from people. It's nice to have people notice when you do well, but as writers, we are more independent. We are creative, and we are artists. We have chosen this path because we have an independent streak within each of us. As a writer, I choose to live and work in isolation, so the last thing I'm going to do is force you to post your numbers online.
I just want to encourage you to track your numbers and be consistent with yourself because it will help you find the perfect pattern. When you have a bad day, you should still keep track of it.
Having data about your bad writing sessions will help you to diagnose and then fix the cause.
You may discover that Saturdays are not a day you should be writing. Only because I have a lot of hard data do I know how fast I can write.
Whether my writing is good or bad, I track how many words I write every day. That is the statistic I look at the most.
I don't look at words per hour very often. That's not really how I track myself because words per hour isn't enough to get you to the finish line.
&nbs
p; Sprinting fast is awesome, and if you can write five thousand words per hour, that's great. But if it's a false statistic and if you're only writing forty minutes a day, that number is meaningless.
Words per hour is sprinting, and words per day is running a marathon. Writing a book is not a sprint, so training as a sprinter will not help you. Knowing your numbers will allow you to estimate when you will finish each project.
Sprinting may be relevant for you if you are writing articles or blog posts. In that case, your measurement is more about how many articles can you write per day.
I track marathon numbers because my projects are almost all long. I don't pay attention to my blog post lengths. For me, that's hobby writing; books are my real business.
Daily word counts are more important to me than anything else. I know how many days it takes me to finish each book. Knowing this number allows me to give accurate numbers to publishers and clients. I can estimate when a book will be done and take on the right number of projects so that I have steady work, without feeling squeezed.
But if you're an article writer or a blog post writer, sprinting will be crucial. You need to know how long it takes you to crank out a blog post or article to figure out how many assignments you can accept and allow you to pace yourself. You can provide better time estimates and make more accurate job bids.
The more you know your numbers, the easier it will be for you to achieve success as a writer.
42
Explore with an Open Mind
Not everything is going to work for you. Some of the techniques I'm going to share with you in this book will crash and burn. They will be complete and total failures.
You are not me, and I'm not trying to replicate myself. There are several different writing flows that I'm going to teach you.
Some of them will improve your writing speed, and some will slow you down. That's okay. Remember that we’re trying to learn a new skill together. There are going to be ups and downs. We might have three or four bad days, but then on day five, you double your writing speed.
Together we are going to find the right workflow for you. It may simply be that switching to dictation changes your life, and maybe we will discover that dictation is the worst thing that ever happened to you.
You may have a very visual learning and creative process. To write quickly and effectively, you need to see the words on the page or screen in front of you. That's the only way you can get a feel for what's happening in your scenes.
Having a unique process is more than okay. I expect it. We are going to explore together, and all I ask is that you try every technique in this book. If you don't complete this book or attempt each of the techniques I share with you, please don't blame the book.
There's nothing more unfair than the person who only reads the first couple of chapters, doesn't try any techniques, and then leaves a bad review. And I know someone will do it because people do it on every book on Amazon.
Every book on Amazon has a negative review by someone who clearly didn't finish it. As a writer, it stinks and hurts your feelings when you get judged unfairly. So all I ask that if you're going to write a negative review, you try the techniques in this book before you call me a quack or a charlatan.
It's unfair to take a training course, not try anything, and then say that it didn't work for you. If you complete this journey with me and try every technique and are still disappointed, then feel free to leave that brutal review you are dreaming of. If my methods failed you, then I deserve it. However, I do hope that you at least notice that it's the fastest review you've ever written. ;)
If you try these things, then you can become a faster, more efficient, more excellent writer. This is a journey we are on together. I can only share my experiences with you. Many of my techniques and writing processes are the result of millions of published words. Hours and hours of trial and error.
I learned to write fast the hard way. I designed this book so that you can learn from my effort without having to go through the same gauntlet.
The 20K a Day System is a two-way street; I can't make you a faster writer if you don't sit down and write. We are partners, and we are in this together. I'm willing to be your Sherpa and lead you up the mountain. All you have to do is follow me, and you will become a very fast writer.
You can achieve excellence; we just have to work together.
43
How To Track Your Progress
There are several different ways to track your progress. Each of these different methodologies will work for different people. This is the first point where I have to ask you to trust me because we need to try several different techniques to see what you enjoy.
There are certain things that I always write by hand. When I write out the notes for my podcast episodes, I always write them in a notebook. I never write them on my computer. Before I head outside to record an episode, I write out my notes and rough episode sketch in my special notebook. Then I take my notebook out to the dock where I'm sitting right now in my little slice of paradise and I record.
I don't like the idea of typing up my notes and printing them out or sending them to my iPad, even though that might increase my efficiency. It would certainly make it easier for me to prep the blog posts that go with each episode, but I am a person who sticks with workflows that work for me.
If you are a tactile person, you might enjoy keeping a physical notebook. Buy a special little notebook and keep it next to your computer. At the end of every hour, write down how many words you have written and the time.
Notebooks don't work for everyone. You may be a spreadsheets kind of person and love using Excel (or Numbers if your computer is a Mac). I can only do a few basic things with Excel. I don't use spreadsheets very often. Therefore that's not how I track my word counts.
But perhaps you are a statistics person and you enjoy the sight of numbers in rows. Perhaps you're good at Excel. If you were good at math or any of the sciences in college and high school, then Excel may be the perfect way for you to track.
You can also create a second Scrivener document and track your word counts in there. Any word processor will work. The key is to find the method that you will stick with.
44
Word Count Math
You might struggle with knowing how many words you wrote in the past hour. Perhaps you can only see the total word count in your document. That's ok. Scrivener only shows the total word count and tracks your daily word count, but it doesn't show you how many words you have written in shorter time blocks.
All you have to do is write the total word count for your document every hour and then later on you will have to do a little math. Take your word count and subtract the word count from an hour earlier. Your 11 AM total minus your 10 AM total is how many words you wrote during that hour.
If you are great at Excel, you can set up some formulas that do this automatically.
45
Best Time of the Day to Write
Keep track of each hour you write during the day to monitor your overall efficiency. You will probably discover you have a bell curve. For the first hour you write, you’re okay. Then in hours two and three you start to speed up, but at hour four, your work starts slipping. This is really valuable data!
We are learning how long it takes you to warm up your writing and exactly when you should start your next break. Maybe you need shorter or longer writing sessions, and we can only find the right rhythm for you with accurate tracking.
46
A Little Gift
I am working on a spreadsheet that I will send to anyone who takes the free gift at the beginning of this book. I'll email you a download link to my template. I'm putting a spreadsheet together because I want to provide you with every tool that you need to achieve success.
I want to create a two-way relationship with you, so I am going to take care of that spreadsheet for you, and I'll email it to you right away. This changes our relationship dynamic, and we will be communicating
with each other. After we have emailed each other once, it will be much easier for you to ask me any questions or share your experience. You just hit reply.
47
Track the Writing Experience
We also want to track your actual writing experience. You are not a robot, and how you feel during each writing session is important data.
When I use a fitness program to track my progress, it tracks how long each exercise took, what I accomplished, and the calories burned, but then it asks me how hard the workout was. It asks for my subjective experience.
There is a reason that the best programs include both subjective and objective tracking. What good is writing fast if you hate it?
This is where your notes will come in handy. Just write down simple notes such as, "I was struggling here," or, "I felt like I was in the zone."
Little notes can be very effective, and again you can put these little notes in the next column in your spreadsheet, or you can keep track with your notebook.
You can use the little yellow sticky notes inside Scrivener if you like. If you write with a different word processor, then you can use their notes.
You can also just have your little, handwritten journal next to your computer. Every hour you write down how many words you wrote. Write down your new word total and how you felt about that session and any other special notes. "I was struggling with this scene," or, "I was struggling writing dialogue," or, "I felt slower."
That's very valuable information.
20K a Day: How to Launch More Books and Make More Money Page 6