Julie Broad walks through a four-step method to write faster: disconnect from the internet, outline your work, do 12-minute writing sprints without stopping, and take breaks between them. She frames it like athletic sprinting and reports strong results from a writers' retreat.
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Are you looking for a way to get your book done faster? This one tip will help you write as many as 2,400 words in 60 minutes. That's probably three times what you do now on average. That's coming up in a minute. Hey, I'm Julie the book broad with Book Launchers, a California based company that will help you write, publish and sell a fantastic book that boosts your business and achieves your goals. First, a quick shout out to some of the fabulous folks in the Book Launchers community visiting me on YouTube on a regular basis. Hello Kevin McGuire, Dale Roberts, Warrior Chick. Ron Neisel, thank you so much for supporting my videos, sharing your wisdom and wit and just being all around amazing folks to have around. I appreciate you. So now to the tip. On Tuesday night you might find me doing something that makes me feel like throwing up. I'm talking about doing running, sprints, stairs and hill runs with a couple of my friends from CrossFit. Often the total working time will add up to less than 15 minutes if you exclude the warm up and cool down. Not a lot of time invested, but the results are gigantic for my fitness level, calorie burn and energy level. Don't worry, you don't have to run until you feel like throwing up to write more. I just applied the same approach to writing my book and then I tested it out at our Book Launchers Writer's Retreat. For the busy professional and entrepreneur who knows a nonfiction book will boost their business, but they're having trouble carving out the time to get it done. The results were enormous so I wanted to share it with you so you can do it too. Here are the four steps. Number one Disconnect. You cannot be connected to the Internet. No phones, no WI fi. You're not researching anything you are writing. I took the attendees phones away. Oh this is great. No, it was pure panic when I did it. But people at the retreat wrote as many as 11,000 words in two days and and they improved their book while they did it. Disconnecting is critical. Number two Plan ahead. You need to know what you're going to write about, so have a great outline and even the first sentence of where you're going to start. That's really important. Need help with this? If you're having trouble writing your book or if you're not sure you've got a good idea, get our free guide on the seven steps to plan and write a great book just for my fabulous YouTube video viewers. Download it at book launchers.com seven steps number three get a timer. I like using this one on my phone. I just swipe up, hit that little clock thing and boom, there's a timer right there. Now, of course, I just said disconnect. So this is on airplane mode, by the way. Whatever timer you use, set it for 12 minutes. When it starts, you do nothing but write. No reading, no rewriting, no pausing. You have to keep writing no matter what. Imagine that if you stop writing for more than a few seconds to Pac man is coming right behind your words to gobble them all up. Number four, stop when the timer goes off. Period. Take a five minute break standing up from your computer and then repeat. If you do two of these sprints, you need less than 30 minutes. And if you can squeeze a few of these in every week, you'll be able to write a few thousand words in very little time. When you add that to blog posts, podcast interviews, you get transcribed or presentation content you already have. You might just be a month or two away from a first draft of your book, but here's the super cool thing. Just like when you add sprinting or hill training to your workout regime, you get faster and fitter overall. By doing these intense focus sprints, you're going to find that you train yourself to write faster in everything you do. You'll hammer out emails faster, and the rest of your book writing time will get more and more efficient. You're welcome. New videos every Friday, so make sure you subscribe and turn on those notifications so we can hang out. And I don't just give shout outs for comments. There are prizes. So if you post a comment on the Friday a video comes out, you'll be entered to win. So say hello and tell me what you're working on. And smash that like button while you're here. It makes me so happy. I locked myself in a dark studio on a lovely sunny day in California just for you. See you next time. Yeah, just about to start writing my book. I need that. What if my goldfish, he hasn't been doing well? What if he dies and nobody can write me? I won't get the call.
