If you’re serious about improving your productivity as a writer, then you should definitely read this book.
Writers are constantly being told that they should increase their word count, but making that jump from a few hundred to a few thousand words an hour can seem very daunting. Fox lays out a system that should work for anyone by laying out incremental steps to improve your productivity. Although some of this may seem obvious if you’ve read other books on writing productivity, it’s still helpful to read this.
One of the things I was told was to use the Pomodoro method when writing, which sets 25-minute timed sessions with 5-minute breaks. This is a good system, but Fox begins with 5-minute sprints and then builds from there. That’s wonderful for writers who might be coming to timed writing sessions for the first time.
The book flows extremely well. Fox writes in a very casual style that makes it feel like you’re having a conversation with him. I blew through the entire book in one sitting. One of the helpful aspects is that if you just want to read the book straight-through before doing any exercises (something I often do), Fox includes all the exercises in an appendix at the end to remind you that you should do them (and it also makes them easily accessible so you can go back to them later or quickly jump to them for reference purposes).
Also, if you have an iOS device, be sure to get the companion app to the book. Up until I downloaded the app, I was using a combination of timers and then had to leave a post-it on my wall to remind myself to enter my word count into a spreadsheet. The app does all that together and it makes tracking incredibly easy.
This is a book I will be recommending to every writer I know.
Pick it up on Amazon and get the app on iOS.
Thanks for the suggestion – I got it.
I’m a sucker for this sort of books… and the fact that they seem to work is indeed a plus 🙂
In case you missed it, you might like to take a look at Rachel Aaron’s “2000 to 10000” – that I found incredibly helpful (and fun to read) and that seems to work along similar lines.
Cheers!
Thanks for the comment! I have read 2k to 10k and loved it. There’s definitely a lot of crossover between the two. Both are well worth reading.
I’ve been wondering about this book. Now I will definitely have to check it out. I’m always looking for tools and resources that will help me write more and faster.