For those of you who don't know, I have a very active region for NaNoWriMo. Very active -- every day but Thanksgiving had a planned event, and probably half of the days had more than one planned event. Most of those events were write-ins.
I gather that the way my region does write-ins is different than many others. We have a regimen that varies in details but is generally the same every time. A number of writing sprints are performed during the write-in, during which everyone is supposed to be actively writing, and not talking or disturbing others. These are broken by 5-20 minute breaks, followed by another sprint. These sprints are usually between 15 and 30 minutes long and often have a word count goal for people to shoot for, though of course there's no recriminations for missing the goal, nor extra rewards for making it.
They also provide a live-stream for nearly all of the write-ins, with a chat window available for people to virtually discuss during the breaks, and we all write (and report back our word counts) even if we aren't there in person.
When I write on my own, I tend to sit in front of the computer and get distracted for a few minutes (read: couple hours) by Facebook, email, Twitter, and various other easily-found shiny things. I don't tend to set time limits, nor goals, nor do I have the peer pressure keeping me writing.
How does it compare? For approximately the same amounts of time allocated for writing, the weeknight write-ins that I attended virtually had me producing an average of 1730 words, while writing by myself I averaged about 1060. That's 60% more words for the write-in days, and mostly (IMO) due to one main cause, and the acronym I used: BICHOK.
Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard.
That seems to be the secret to the success. By actually having my hands ready to write, and using peer pressure to keep me from being distracted, I wrote many more words than I would otherwise. It's a secret I've known for a while, though this year was the first I thought to quantify it.
Also interesting to note: the second-most productive time for me (or maybe first, since it was shorter time periods)? Writing in the car while my wife drove us somewhere. Apparently having no wifi and also knowing that she could tell when I was typing and when I wasn't also kept me productively engaged.
So there you have it, one of the biggest secrets to writing success (or so I've heard). Actually writing. Who would have thunk, indeed.
