These Two Books Got Me to 8,000 Words Per Hour

I Achieved a Writing Speed of 8,796 Words Per Hour This Morning & Hit My Goal of 2,000 Words for the Day in Under 20 Minutes Because of These Two Books

Just a heads-up: this post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra, and you’ll keep me supplied in caffeine. It’s a win for everyone, really.

• Write Better, Faster: How To Triple Your Writing Speed and Write More Every Day (The Productive Novelist Book 3) Kindle Edition by Monica Leonelle – https://amzn.to/3S4jcvw
• Write Better, Faster: How to Triple Your Writing Speed and Write More Every Day (Growth Hacking for Storytellers #1) Audible Audiobook – Unabridged by Monica Leonelle – https://amzn.to/3qVcID0
• 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter Kindle Edition by Chris Fox – https://amzn.to/3BWvOPt
• 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter, Volume 1 Audible Logo Audible Audiobook by Chris Fox – https://amzn.to/3Bx15Hl

So what was it? How did I manage to hit my goal of 2,000 words for today in under 20 minutes? I did it with dictation. For those of you who are groaning and rolling your eyes right now, I felt that way about dictation, too, for a long time. I was certain it would never work for me and even insisted that I’m “stupid out loud.”

Here’s the thing, though. I’m on a KILLER deadline with Coven of Shadows, and I need to get a draft of this book out as quickly as I possibly can, and I need to make the best use I can of every spare minute I have if I’m going to get this book out without losing my ability to do preorders for an entire year.

I reread 5,000 Words Per Hour by Chris Fox a couple of months ago, and just as I did the first three times I read it, I groaned and wrinkled my nose at the mention of dictation, sure it would never work for me. So, I put a pin in that idea and went on about my business, plodding through this draft and struggling with everything under the sun about it, but that’s another story for another time. Back to the story at hand.

When I drive to run errands by myself, I listen to writing craft and writing business audiobooks that I think will help me get to where I want to be in my writing career. Lately, I’ve been listening to Write Better, Faster by Monica Leonelle while I’m running errands in the car, and to my absolute dread and horror, she talked about dictation, too. However, I used one of my precious Audible credits to purchase this book, so I’m going to give it a fair shake and listen to what she has to say, even if it does involve something that I was sure, at the outset of my listening, wasn’t going to work for me.

Let me say now that I’m not executing her advice perfectly yet, and I haven’t even finished the book yet, but when I was listening yesterday, a thought struck me about a way that I could potentially make dictation work for me, my current life circumstances (which we’ll discuss some other time), and my personal writing process.

Seriously, what could it hurt to try dictation, but in a way that works for ME?

So, I bought myself a good headset and adapter for my iPhone, and I already have the Otter.ai app to transcribe notes for me during meetings. A lot of what comes to me first with my books is dialogue, anyway. So, I decided to turn on Otter, put on my headset, put my phone in my pocket, and just go down my list of beats this morning while I was having trouble sleeping and doing morning chores (switching laundry over from the washer to the dryer and unloading the dishwasher, for those of you who are curious) and speak any dialogue that came to mind for each scene into Otter.ai.

So, between 6:30 and 6:40 this morning, I did a 10-minute dialogue-only dictation sprint covering several different scenes, and managed to dictate 1,466 words of dialogue in just 10 minutes, which works out to a speed of 8,796 Words Per Hour, or WPH. That’s MIND BLOWING, guys. I’ve been struggling to hit 2,000 words in a day, and I got well over halfway there in just ten minutes.

I took a break for breakfast and changed into my clothes for the day, then took another ten minutes and cleaned up and expanded each of those dialogue beats until I hit my goal of 2,000 words for the day.

I paused, made audio notes for myself on where I wanted to go with the ones I hadn’t expanded yet, and let myself take a nap until it was time for us to officially get up and go to work for the day because I slept poorly last night and I was super tired.

I will DEFINITELY be doing more words before the day is over, and this has probably changed my entire writing process forever, and I’m so glad. I can get more writing done, still do typed sprints in Write or Die, or expand on things in a slower-paced way just in the Dabble Writer App, and it opens up more time for me to enjoy my husband and my kiddo.

All I’m saying is even if you don’t THINK dictation will work for you, give it a try and see if there’s possibly a way you can use it and adapt it to how your brain works because it’s absolutely a game changer, especially for those of us with musculoskeletal issues like carpal tunnel or EDS.

I love you guys and I hope this is helpful for you!