Fox’s book is dedicated to being able to write quicker, plain and simple. He begins the book with a micro sprint. Basically, this is an exercise to benchmark how fast you can write in a 5-minute stretch. The rest of the book builds upon this micro sprint.
5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter* is 120 pages spread across 11 chapters. Fox begins with the simple micro sprint exercise but then quickly teaches you how you can improve the speed. Chapter 2 is dedicated to creating a writing environment that is conducive to speed writing. He focuses on finding a place and time to focus just on writing.
Chapter 3 is about the importance of tracking your writing speed during an hour and during the day. Simply keeping track of how you continuously improve your writing speed.
In Chapter 4, Fox stresses the need to prepare for writing. Eliminating distractions that will slow you down. He has a checklist to prepare you for your writing session. This checklist helps you ensure you have everything you need to begin writing and that you can just jump right into it.
Chapter 5 is important because this is where you do some preliminary organization. In this book, Fox primarily focuses on fictional writing. He does some basic outlining and creates beats to help the writing process go smoother. However, this can also apply to non-fiction writing or just simply a blog post. The same ideas apply. You list items you going to write about so that you can write clearly and quickly as you flesh out your ideas.
Chapter 6 is dedicated to what is called a full sprint. That is when you dedicate 20 minutes to writing non-stop. This is where your most productive work it’s completed. The previous chapters lead up to this moment.
Chapter 7 is about increasing your speed. Fox provides a lot of tips on how you can do this but basically, says it’s a matter of intentional practice. You will continuously get stronger as you continue to work on these techniques.
In Chapter 6, the focus was on just writing; however, in Chapter 8, Fox explains how to get the most out of editing sprints where you go back to clean up and correct errors and problem areas. It also is an opportunity to identify areas that need strengthening.
Chapters 9, 10, and 11 focus on measuring progress, being able to reward yourself for improving, and having the right mindset or how you can foster a mindset to continue writing productively.
Conclusion
First of all, I really liked 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter. I have already picked up tips that are helping me in my writing process. Primarily, I’ve been focusing on my blogs but I need to get back to my book. The tips that I learned will help me do it with more success than I’ve had in the past.
Fox is also built tools that allow you to very easily keep track of your writing speed. This will help you know if you’re improving or not. He also shares a spreadsheet to help track progress.
One of the strategies he talks about to get to the 5000 words per hour is dictating which I had written about previously. This blog post like many of my recent blog posts has been dictated, at least the first draft. It is made a huge difference. Just as an example, the first draft of this blog post took me about 5 minutes to write and I have about 700 put to paper.
If you are a writer, I think you will enjoy this book. It’s a quick read and you will benefit from the lessons learned. I recommend this book.
Additional Reading
- What I Have Learned Writing a Book
- Book Review: Write Better, Faster: How To Triple Your Writing Speed and Write More Every Day
- #ATD2015: Writing Blogs, Articles, and Books to Boost Your Career by Cathy Fyock
- Book Review: Published.: The Proven Path From Blank Page to Published Author
- Book Review: Scrivener Superpowers: How to Use Cutting-Edge Software to Energize Your Creative Writing Practice
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