Now that we've gotten the fluffy woo-woo chapter out of the way, it's time to roll up our sleeves and do the real work.

The core of the 5,000 Words Per Hour system is flow state. Our whole goal is reaching and sustaining it, and the primary tool we utilize to do this is the writing sprint.

The next twenty-nine days will all have to do with one or both of these concepts. Flow state is that important, and has been the corner stone of my career. Nor do you have to take my word for it. Flow state is a measurable neurological brain state called theta state.

I just call it the force.

Our best words are written in flow state, also called "the zone" by athletes around the world. We achieve flow state by training our brains to just write in the same place, at the same time, in the same way. Our brains respect familiarity. Grooves in a record.

This first lecture talks about what Flow State is, how to achieve it, and why you'd want to. We harness sprints to get there. The process is simple.

• Think about what you're going to write
• Set a timer and when it starts you begin writing, and do not stop until that timer goes off.
• Record your words

Once you've watched the video you will complete an exercise, and then move on to the next lecture.

It is important that you do the exercises. The course is simple. The work is hard.

In Each Module, where it corresponds to the book, we also include the text. Below you'll find what 5,000 Words Per Hour Has to say about micro-sprints.

First, let's tackle that assignment.

Assignment: Get out a stopwatch, or use the one on your phone. Choose a length of time between 3 and 10 minutes. Start the timer, and write until it goes off. Do not stop. Keep writing until the end, and try to avoid going back to edit unless you absolutely have to.

Now post the following in the comments, "I have conducted my first sprint in my new writing life. From today forward I am a new author. I will set goals, and I will hit them."

Optionally, add your number of words and sprint duration. There's no shame here. It only gets better from here.

Now, onto the text from 5,000 Words Per Hour. If you've read the book, or have it in another format, feel free to skip this part.

The writing sprint is the most vital skill you’ll gain from this book, and if you take away nothing else I promise that your writing will forever be transformed. My first inclination was to make this chapter five, but I resisted that inclination. Why chapter five? Why not chapter one?

Because there are things you need to know first to make your sprints effective. Things like tracking your progress, like clearing the decks so you aren’t distracted when a sprint begins. You need to organize your scene(s) before you start a writing sprint so that you know exactly what it is you’re going to write. It would also be helpful if you knew about voice dictation, one of the most powerful weapons in a writer’s arsenal.

But let’s be honest. If I rambled about all of those things before giving you something useful, something you could apply to your writing right now, then you’d most likely never read far enough to learn about sprints. So I’m not going to do that. I’m going to start with the foundation of a system that will change your writing forever. You’ll learn the rest as you progress through the book.

What Is a Writing Sprint?

A writing sprint is, quite simply, a pre-defined length of time where you will do nothing but write. It has a clearly defined start and end time, and while you are writing you will do absolutely nothing else. No web surfing. No answering the phone. No checking email. No going to the bathroom. All of those things should be handled before your sprint begins (see Chapter 4- Clearing the Decks for tips on how to do that).

Once a sprint begins your fingers fly across the keyboard until you are finished. You do not stop. You do not go back and edit. You keep writing until the buzzer goes off. It’s that simple.

How Can Sprints Help You?

Well duh, you’re probably saying. Of course you should be writing for a set duration, but how harmful can the occasional interruption be? Catastrophic, that’s how harmful. I’m going to go a little geeky on you with some neuroscience. The goal of a writing sprint is to get you into the flow state, where your brain will naturally focus on an activity you are good at to the exclusion of all else.

I’ll bet money you’ve been in this state before. Probably many times, and probably while you were writing. Have you ever sat down at the keyboard and the words just flowed? Whole chapters burst out of you and you were shocked by the rapid progress? Unfortunately if you’re like most people those bursts are unpredictable and painfully elusive.

Writing sprints will help you get into flow state on command. Once you’ve harnessed the sprint you’ll begin training your brain to enter flow state on command. This will allow you to crank out far more words than you ever thought possible. More importantly, those words will be among the best you’ve ever written. Not only will you get faster, but you will also get better.

Have I got your attention? Excellent. How about we try out one of these sprints?

Your First Micro Sprint

You’re about to begin your very first sprint. Don’t worry, it’s not anything monumental. This will be a micro-sprint. If you read the intro chapter you remember me mentioning them, because they’re how I started this whole process. They’re designed to be quick and easy, but as time goes on you’ll get better and you’ll eventually graduate to full sprints. Don’t worry about that for now, though. We’ll get there.

Your micro sprint will last for exactly five minutes. That’s a nice bite-size chunk of time, and it should let you focus on just one scene. More importantly, it’s manageable for your brain. Writing stamina is built just like muscle. You wouldn’t start off running a marathon, or bench pressing 315 pounds. Nor would you try to sit down for an hour and just write if you’ve never done it before.

There are a few steps I’d like you to do before we get started:

#1- Open your word processor of choice to a blank document

#2- Turn off wifi and/or internet on your computer.

#3- Put on mood music appropriate to the scene you’re about to write.

#4- Jot down a quick paragraph describing the scene or topic you’re about to write about. These words do not count towards the micro sprint.

#5- DO NOT STOP

Number five is the most important, so take it to heart. You’re not going to stop writing at any point. You aren’t going to go back and fix typos, or retype paragraphs to make them cleaner. You’re going to write straight through, no interruptions and no stopping. Ready? Set a timer for five minutes. GO.

Results

How did you do? If you followed the steps above you’re probably staring at a small pile of words you feel are utter crap. That’s totally okay. The goal, at first, is quantity over quality. You need to train yourself to generate a massive volume of text without editing it. If you can do that you can crank through an entire manuscript in less than a month.

You may be asking what the point is if the writing you’ve turned out is utter crap. There are several massive advantages:

#1- You’re learning to complete projects. The vast majority of writers will never finish a short story, much less a novel. Teaching yourself to write in sprints will propel you to the end of your project.

#2- You’ll begin seeing things at a larger level. By that I mean you pick out common problems in your writing that show up over and over. Things like word re-use, character tics and all sorts of other problems. Once you see those tendencies you’ll automatically begin to compensate, and future drafts will be better while still being written at high speed.

#3- You’ll learn story structure, something that those who endlessly tinker with the same three chapters will never experience. Completing projects teaches characterization, plotting, pacing and a whole host of other parts to your craft. You complete entire novels by cranking out thousands of words each and every day. As of this writing I’ve written seven novels. Every last one has massively improved my skills, and I now crank out better novels faster than ever.

The endless tinkerers I know have inevitably never finished anything. They agonize over the same page or chapter for months, tweaking each word until it’s as perfect as it can get. I laud that kind of perfectionist approach, but I save that for my final draft. To get there I have to crank out four or five previous drafts.

Words Per Hour

This first micro sprint is also going to generate a concept you’ll see used throughout this book. The idea of Words Per Hour. Since your micro sprint was five minutes multiply the total by 12. That’s your WPH, for a micro sprint. Why the clarification? Because writing for a solid hour has to be built up to and takes a lot more discipline. You can’t simply multiply five minutes of work by 12 to get a true representation of your WPH.

The number is still useful though, because of the exercise to follow. You’re going to start tracking your WPH for a 5 minute sprint every day, and you’ll see that number begin to go up. This is critical, because the thing that will keep you coming back to the keyboard every day is progress. If you know you’re improving you’ll be inspired to keep working. This is why it’s so vital to track everything. 

What can be tracked can be improved, but the inverse is not true. If you aren’t tracking you have no idea if you’re getting better. That’s exactly why I quit writing before, and also the reason I will never quit again. Instead I’ll continue to improve every day, and if you do the work so will you.

A Quick Note About Exercises

This book will be useless to you if you don’t do the exercises. However, you might be sitting on a bus right now in a position to keep reading, but not to do a writing sprint. If you’d prefer to read the entire book before doing any exercises that’s fine. You’ll find the complete list in the Appendix at the back of the book.

Exercise #1- Micro-Sprints

This exercise will be ongoing. Create a daily reminder in whatever app you use (a calendar program, the reminder app on your smartphone or any other method will work). This reminder is for a 5 minute writing sprint every day. You’ll record your start time, end time and number of words written every day for the first week. Most importantly, you will record your WPH as explained above.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write for longer periods, but we’re starting small. Once you’ve mastered 5 minutes for a week we’ll take it to 10. Eventually you’ll reach 30, which is my optimum sprint length. You may find that yours is longer or shorter, but this exercise is the first step in answering that question.