If you’re currently writing a book but you’re finding that it seems to be taking forever, then you’re probably wondering how to actually get that book done already so you can start editing. While writing a book is a lengthy process, there are still ways that you can make the process feel a bit faster and more precise. So, for today’s post, I’ll be talking about some tips and tricks on how to finish writing your book faster.
(affiliate disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links which means that I make a small commission at no additional cost to you when you purchase something through my links).
Set a Goal, Plan a Deadline
First, you want to set your goals and objectives for your writing. Do you want to query your book to agents and publishers, do you want to self-publish, or are you writing just for yourself? Having an end-goal in mind will make setting your deadlines easier.
Once you have your goals in mind, what you want to do is to think up what sort of deadline you want to put on yourself. This doesn’t have to be a hard deadline unless you’re self-publishing and you’re trying to get pre-orders and have a release date in mind. This could be flexible depending on your personal needs, but you want to set a deadline that is realistic with your free time and makes sense with your goal.
For instance, if you know that you tend to be able to write 1,000 words in a day, try not to set a goal to write 4,000 words right away in one day. This will feel out of reach and will make it harder for you to properly get your work done.
Use Outlining to Save Writing Time
Although outlining a plot and story may seem like it adds more time onto your writing process, it actually can help you save time in advance. Outlining a book can take about a day if you’re doing it efficiently, and I’ve discussed how you can outline a plot in one day on my blog before.
Outlining your plot can help you basically create a sort of roadmap for your book, which will make the writing of that book more efficient. You want to outline the main plot points, the character arcs, any major subplots that you can think you want to include, and so on.
Outlining helps you get an overview of your own story, which makes it easier to write out the chapters. You can take it a step further and actually plan each individual chapter out yourself, but this will probably take more time and will eventually lead to changes as you write each chapter.
If you want to learn more about why outlining is good, then check out this post. If you want help figuring out how to outline the three-act structure for a plot, check out this post.
Create a Writing Routine for Yourself
Part of the writing process and making it efficient is to create a routine for your writing. You want to set aside time out of your day to write your book if you want to be able to finish writing it faster. You want to check your current schedule and think about what time you have free for writing and plan it out for your week as you would any other activity if you find that writing is something serious for you.
Find a spot where you feel the most productive and set up your writing space there. I personally don’t have a particular spot, as I’ll write on the kitchen table, on my couch, at my desk, etc… but I find that some people work better in a place that inspires their creativity, so if you’re that type of person, pick the spot where you feel you can get the most writing done.
Set Word Count Targets
To set a word count target, you’ll want to first figure out what the total word count you want to include in your novel will be. This depends on the genre and the target market of your book, and if you want help figuring out how many words your novel will need, you can check out this post where I go in-depth on this subject.
As a writer of fantasy, my books tend to range well over 100,000 words, so let’s just say my goal is 150,000 words. If I wanted to write about 3,000 words every day, the book would take me 50 days to write in total, which is just shy of two months. The word count goal you set for your writing sessions depends on how many times a week you can write, what your personal writing capacity is, when your book needs to be finished, and how many words your book will have in total.
Try to Eliminate Distractions
As a person who frequently gets distracted by YouTube, my phone, and other books I have lying around, I find that to get writing, I need to get the distractions as far away as possible. There are ways to do this, but a lot of it does require self-discipline. You’ll want to make your writing space decluttered, keep your phone a bit far from your easy reach, and to try and just focus on the writing only for that period of time.
This may not be something you get down right away, and I personally still am not perfect at this part, but you shouldn’t beat yourself up about getting distracted. It happens to the best of us. Just recover the next day and get back to writing.
Don’t be a Perfectionist
One of the reasons why so many writers take a long time trying to finish up their first draft is because they’re trying to make every single sentence as perfect as humanly possible. I am just going to give it to you straight: Your first draft is going to suck, and that’s fine. The first draft is just the beginning of writing a book and you need to understand that it will take edits and revisions and possibly rewrites to get it the way it needs to be. Don’t be a perfectionist while you’re still on your first draft.
Book 2 of my series, Soldat, went through several rewrites before I felt that it was in a position that worked for my series. Malware itself was actually rewritten entirely with a new plot from its original version. Embrace the idea that your first draft is flawed and you will be able to better treat it with care.
Try Out the Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro Technique is basically a productivity solution that splits an hour into intervals of 25 minutes of work, five minutes of rest until you reach an entire hour. You repeat this several times, with 15 minute breaks after four 25-minute intervals.
There are plenty of variations to the Pomodoro Technique and you can adjust it as you see fitting to your own productivity schedule. There’s YouTube videos with plenty of timer variations too if you want something that’s structured.
Get Feedback Ahead of Time
As you’re writing, it helps to try and find a writing buddy or at least somebody close to you who’s willing to read your manuscript in its rough stages. It may seem a bit jarring to ask someone to read an unpolished product, but if you don’t get feedback early on and find someone to bounce ideas off of, then you may not realize if you’ve got a problem with your plot and story.
Getting feedback will require you to be open to getting constructive criticism. Take suggestions and keep them in mind because there’s likely some validity to these suggestions in the first place.
Use Technology to Help
I always recommend using technology to facilitate the writing process and make your life easier when you’re writing your manuscript. There’s plenty of writing tools that can help with your story and you can check out this list of ten of the best writing software out there and choose the one that suits your needs the best.
If you’re writing a speculative fiction book that will require lots of world building and you need to keep track of that as you’re writing your first draft, then you should check out this article that talks about the ten best world building tools that I personally recommend.
I always recommend Scrivener as my favorite choice for writing books and world building, and I’ve reviewed it in-depth before if you’re interested.
Conclusion
In order to finish writing a book faster, you’ll need to be a careful planner, maintain your goals, be disciplined while you’re working towards those goals, and to use the proper strategies as you’re writing. Staying on-target will let you keep pushing forward, giving you more room to actually finish your book in the reasonable timeline that you can finish it in. Furthermore, you should be open to change. There may come days where you thought you could write but something’s come up and it’s just not possible. You can always add the writing onto another day or to just adjust your goal if you have that leeway. You should also try not to expect perfection on your first draft. It will likely be bad, but that’s fine because by the end of it all, your story will have come together beautifully!
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so that you don’t miss out on any posts, updates on my WIPs, book release dates, and more!