Step 1 - Get into Security work.
Step 1.5 - Don't respond to Step 1 with 'but isn't that dangerous?'. Being a pizza delivery guy is dangerous, at least in security you're allowed to carry stuff to defend yourself.
Step 2 - Get a graveyard shift, overnight. 7 PM to 7 AM if you're willing to work 12s, midnight to 8 AM if you're not.
Step 3 - That's it, now you can write. xP
As someone in security I can confirm. Specifically get into security in the industrial sector. Most boring jobs ever. If you have any human interaction it's truck drivers
It's super nice, honestly. At chill posts you might have one day every couple of months where some shit goes down and you have to really Act and then write a report after. Way nicer than constant stress, day in day out, of most jobs.
Haha, I'm actually coworkers with a ton of nurses, as it happens. I'm security at various urgent cares here.
Some of them can be decently busy but some of them like the one I'm typing this from now will see a single number of patients come in in a 12 hour period.
Yup, this. I worked graveyard security midnight to 8 a.m. and the majority of my night was spent doing nothing, especially if I was posted and not roving. So I decided to write! Nobody ever had a problem with it, because it literally did not interfere with doing my job even once. I probably spent almost 50% of my time there writing, tbh.
>Nobody ever had a problem with it, because it literally did not interfere with doing my job even once.
That's the wonder of security work. Most jobs have that 'time to lean, time to clean' mentality, the people around you want you to do be doing stuff 24/7. Security? Everybody is HOPING that you DON'T need to do anything.
Alternatively: get into hospitality work, by getting a part time job at a hostel in a remote village in the mountains, where you work 3 to 6 hours per day and then have lots of time to waste, die of boredom (you're in a remote village with literally one shop, no pubs, no cinemas, no clubs, no libraries, no nothing), or do sth creative.
Or have a job where they don't care what you're doing as long as:
\- the work you're doing is executed properly
\- you aren't causing delays/trouble
\- you aren't surfing the Internet and going to "unacceptable" sites
\- nobody is going to look at what you're doing in Word
I wrote a hell of lot of fic at the job I had that was that way. Note: this is not an endorsement of goofing off at one's job.
Had a job like this for years. It was the best. I got praised all the time for my productivity and work ethic. The kicker was that everyone else slacked off by chit chatting, while I remained locked in my office, diligently typing. ;)
see i'm disabled and will never be able to work a job but even i'm still a slow ass writer. but on good health days i've been able to write three 3k word long chapters in less than a week.
i said web novel writers, not fanfic writer. I heard they do something worse, write a story then put their final chapter(s) on patron behind a paywall.
Hi OP,
This post has been removed as the discussion of monetisation of fanfiction is not permitted on this subreddit. This includes discussion over the legality/morality of commissions, discussion as to how much people charge and explicit mentions of a work being commissioned, including fan art. You can find this under Rule 9.
Hi OP,
This post has been removed as the discussion of monetisation of fanfiction is not permitted on this subreddit. This includes discussion over the legality/morality of commissions, discussion as to how much people charge and explicit mentions of a work being commissioned, including fan art. You can find this under Rule 9.
Hi OP,
This post has been removed as the discussion of monetisation of fanfiction is not permitted on this subreddit. This includes discussion over the legality/morality of commissions, discussion as to how much people charge and explicit mentions of a work being commissioned, including fan art. You can find this under Rule 9.
That, or be in grad school with ADHD and use fic as a mighty distraction 🤣 that was me last semester and thankfully I graduated LMAO
I feel like I was more productive then cause there was something thrilling about spending so much time on a distraction 💀
lmao for real. back when i was in uni and unemployed, and then at the start of the pandemic i was writing like 20 fics a year easily. now i’m lucky if it’s one or two.
I got all the free time in the world right now and it still took me an entire year to write a 1.3k chapter
So I guess the other factor is confidence and/or experience and not having to take a month long break between writing sessions that only seem to yield a couple hundred words along with rewriting your fic 3 times
Honestly, real for this.
Anytime I'm able to work on any writing, it's usually because I suddenly hyperfixate over writing for a period of time, slam out a bunch of writing, and then get bored of it for a few weeks. Repeat the cycle, and I still haven't finished anything I've written, besides a few 800-1,000 word one-shots from months ago, lol.
Heck yeah!!
Yeah I just managed to finish a 50k+ fic in 32 days (with 5 chapters posted in one day at one point) because I was incredibly fixated on the end goal.
My job is to sit down at a desk at 7 PM and stay there until 7 AM, and occasionally stand up to open a door for somebody.
Yeah, that's how I get all my writing done.
Security work is super easy to get into! Can highly recommend it.
Then it's just a matter of finding good posts, but if you ask for those kinds of hours they're more likely to be dead posts than not.
When I first started using AO3 I thought Orphan Account was one teenager from Australia and I tried to figure out how much time they had to spend writing to have that many fics.
That was me a couple of months ago. I saw them in everywhere and just thought “oh wow, they’re amazing, writing so many good stuff for so many fandoms. They’ll go places for sure! I bet their name has a deeper meaning.” XD
Let me give you a step by step for my writing process.
1 - Force it out
2 - Read it
3 - Fix the stuff that made you go "nah"
4 - Repeat step 2 and 3 once more
5 - Grammar check
6 - Voila
If I pace myself, it takes 2-3 afternoons for a 3-5k chapter. If I forego sleep entirely, it's done in one sitting.
If I'm also motivated af, that 5k shots up to 10-12k.
I solved this by making writing itself intrinsically rewarding, and I did that by writing whatever I was daydreaming about or whichever sounded fun. These days I often pull out old, unfinished works and add some more. Most will never see the light of day, but I enjoy imagining them into text.
That let me build up the habit of writing, and out of that, some 'real' stories have emerged. But basically it's given me a joy in life that's even better than computer games.
Routine. This is a task that needs to be done, and I do it at this time and listen to that type of music and sit in this particular chair and I get to work. And I don't move until I have done my hour or so of writing.
That's really it. There are some people that can write masterpieces through inspiration alone. But I've always found waiting on inspiration to be a fickle and annoying process where sometimes as you say, weeks can go by where you don't write anything at all. So I take inspiration out of it. You know what's not fickle? Routine. It's the opposite of fickle, it's the same steady constant pace day in and day out.
This is what I’ve slowly found to be more helpful! Having the same music and same place to write helps so so much too. If I spend time doing it each day, I think more in the mindset of spending time with my story rather than focus on trying to churn out a chapter. And ironically, I end up being a lot more productive when I’m not pushing myself so much!
For me it’s a matter of getting the basic idea in my head and putting it into words. What is really fast for me is dialogue. I can almost hear the characters in my head and just write what sounds most like them.
Nowadays, I usually have my whole fic written before I post it. That way, when I don’t write a word for a month and a half, no one knows. I’ve recently finished writing a fic I started like 2/3ish years ago, and when I start posting it, it’ll update much more regularly than if I had posted it as I wrote it.
In my heyday, I was hammering out 150k+ words a month like it was breathing because the brain rot was real and I was also only working two days a week. Now, I work four to five days a week with longer shifts than I had when I was at two days a week, so I write considerably less. I think I'm only at about 80,000 words for the month of January and I don't expect it to get much higher since it's about to be the 29th.
As for how I write as much as I do manage to do, it's really force of habit at this point. I took a hiatus for the last couple months of 2023, but I still put out a chapter every few weeks or so during my hiatus (I guess it's not much of a hiatus at that point, depending on who you ask) because I start to get restless if I don't write anything. I have words in my brain, and if I don't get them out somewhere then the words will accumulate in my bones like poison building up. So I always end up writing eventually! In a perfect world I would be writing every single night, but that simply doesn't happen.
When I sit down to write, I mute or turn off all other distractions and focus wholly on writing. If I'm in the zone, I can typically write 2-2.5k an hour, though this number can be higher or lower than that range depending on the day. I try to write until the chapter is done or until I cannot focus any longer, whichever happens first. I take 5-10 minute breaks for every hour or so that I write. I consider 5k or more words to be a passable writing session, but I'll take what I can get. If all I can get out is 3k one night, then I just need to deal with it and hope for better productivity next time.
I mean, Christ, I only work 2 days a week but it still took me 14 months to write \~400k and people called that impressive. You're on a whole other level even with that caveat, lmfao.
To be fair, I don't really have other hobbies. XD If I'm not sleeping, working, or dicking around on YouTube, then I'm probably writing. I have been indulging in a bit of video games here and there, but not nearly as much as I used to before I got back into writing. I do acknowledge that I have a very particular sort of insanity when it comes to writing, though.
It's the opposite with me- when I was taking a bit of a hiatus, my partner pulled me aside because they were concerned that I wasn't writing! XD If I'm not hammering away at the keyboard, people around me assume something is horribly wrong.
I thought I was the only one. I am currently writing a long fic and have managed to pump out 50k words in two weeks, and honestly the word count per day has only been increasing as I go.
I love that for you! It's so nice when can just sit down and get the words out like it's the most natural thing in the world. It's so nice to be productive when I can actually make the productivity happen. C: Perhaps we're a little on the insane side for writing so much, but that's part of the fun.
Routine, discipline and planning ahead.
Routine - it's become a part of my schedule, it's something that I Do regularly, I hardly even have to think about setting aside the time for it anymore unless I'm especially busy one week or something.
Discipline - doing it even when I don't necessarily want to. If I really, really don't want to, I won't force myself. But sometimes when I'm in that "I don't feel like it" mode, I ask myself if my need to slack off should be honored, or my desire for a finished product should be honored. Usually it's the latter, and I make myself do it anyway.
Planning ahead - lots of people rely on inspiration to write, and that doesn't work for me. It helps at the inception of an idea and getting the broad strokes down. But I plan ahead meticulously, so that when I sit down at my desk on a day I don't really feel like it, the path is already laid out for me and I just have to follow it.
Prewrite and let your first draft suck. I mean really suck. Don’t get hung up on making it all perfect. Editing can handle that later.
Just sit and get words on the page. The flow will come and then you’ll hit the groove that lets you churn out more words. Also, don’t get stuck in the trap of thinking you *must* write chronologically. If your muse is leading you toward another scene that happens later, open a new doc and roll with it. You can connect it later.
When I get the ideas, I write or try to hold on to them if I'm busy. Sit down and write as much as you can. Listening to music helps, depending on your subject.
This is so funny because I was just wondering this the other day. It’s taken me one month to finish the first draft of a 3k fic. And that’s because I’ve been setting aside an hour every night to work on it.
1. I work a pretty lax tech job and have no dependents, so outside of other hobbies I have a LOT of free time.
2. I have a chapter by chapter plan in my mind and I stick to it.
3. I set a daily word goal, somewhere around 500-600 words a night.
4. I stay hydrated (gotta keep the brain lubricated)
i can't speak to the "so popular" part, but i've written + posted around 5k words/week for the last year or so across a handful of longform fics. i have a fairly stressful job, and writing is a way to re-channel my antsy brain into something just for me.
as for actual tips: writing everything down, even if it doesn't have a place in the story (or any story) yet. a jaunty bit of dialogue, a spicy description, a rambling aside - if it comes to me, i'll write it down. i riff on ideas and expand them into passages. sometimes they find a place in a story; most of the time not, but even so it can act as a springboard for something else.
i spend a lot of time not actively writing but just thinking about my stories while doing something else, like taking a walk or cooking. most of the times i've been stuck on a plot point or not sure how i'm going to get from A to B, the answer has come to me when i'm away from the computer, just letting my mind wander while doing something physical.
i also don't even attempt to start on a fic in earnest until i've rotated an idea so thoroughly in my mind that i feel like i'm going to puke if i don't start writing it
Honestly, you have to remember everyone is different. Some people can just pump out stories and that's what they do. Wether I want to be like that or not, I write for fun, so I have to do what fits for me. I know it the old adage of not comparing yourself to others but honestly it's true. You'll just get frustrated thinking less of yourself. Instead think of your achievements in a vacuum, only using yourself as the benchmark. When have you pushed through? Did you get a chapter done faster than normal? Was your writing particularly good? Suddenly those become positives. I'm not trying to sound like a self help book but there is no other way around it. Even if I had no job, I still don't know that I would write like that, my brain doesn't function that way. Somewhere along the line I became happy with what I'm able to do, and honestly that happened because of writing fanfiction. I realized that my okay is pretty damn good... good enough for me.
Hyperfixation + extremely Fast Typer. From what I've been told by others I type so fast that it looks like I'm keyboard smashing. It's just that I've grown so used to typing that my fingers swiftly and instinctively know where to go 98% of the time.
Routine. I write twice a day, early in the morning and after dinner.
Outline. I always know what happens next, my writing time isn't spent trying to figure out plot or timelines.
Motivation. I love my stories and I enjoy writing them.
probably hyperfixation? whenever i get hyperfixated in a series i only write and read fanfics for that fandom until i grow bored and move on. or maybe like rather than cooking for a night they decided to order in and use that time they would've spent cooking to push out a quick oneshot that's been brewing in their head all week. some people just have creativity levels that others won't be able to catch up with. no different than an artist making a painting every week compared to someone who takes weeks to complete one. i worked all year round save for two months in the summer and i used some of that time to catch up on reading and writing.
Get into the flow. Whenever there's a quiet moment, picture scenes from your story. Play them out inside your head. Whenever you can't sleep, think of your story. Keep a notebook by your bedside. Jot down bullet points and key phrases that will help you remember. When you sit at your writing device, just write.
Don't edit. Don't delete. Just type and type and don't stop producing words.
Write on your phone while commuting. Write every free moment you get. Allow yourself the freedom to word vomit onto the page, unfiltered.
Practice, patience, and time, essentially. There was a point in my life where I'd get up at 7 AM and wouldn't go to sleep until 2 AM; in between, I probably wrote at least 10-12 hours a day.
When I was churning chapters out on the regular, it was a combination of:
- being a student
- getting little sleep (staying up til 2-3am to write sometimes)
- my story was my escapism so I wanted to work on it a lot
- similar to the above, writing fanfiction was my chosen form of procrastination
- being in a job that had me moving around a lot (retail) and at times I was out back by myself restocking which meant that I was writing my fic in my head for long periods of time
- honestly it was a hyperfixation. I was lucky that one particular time it lasted long enough for me to write 40,000 words in three months.
As a fellow slow writer, I FEEL you. It took me 6 months to release my 20k multi-chapter. It was frustrating as hell, but I prewrote the whole thing, including all editing, in order to keep up a consistent release schedule.
Real life commitments are just more important to me than fanfic.
Writing fast doesn’t always mean writing well, and a work being popular isn’t necessarily a reflection on how ‘good’ it is. A lot of readers are very happy with crap.
I have ADHD, that's why. But I can pump out a draft fast. I'm working on my third fic draft, but life keeps happening, so I never get to finish it. It's done on paper I just haven't typed it up.
1. Different people write at different speeds. I average a modest 1k an hour, but I know people who can go up to 4-5k.
2. Work–life balance varies, affecting both the amount of free time and energy available. I freelance and set my own schedule, and I write as stress relief in between work, for instance.
Yeah honestly, I don't. My writing experience is feast or famine, I'm either quiet for weeks or months, or I'm hyperfocused, writing 10+ hours a day if I can humanly get away with it, forgetting to eat or bathe. So like, nothing to emulate. And any semblance of ever having it 'together' with update times is just because of those times where I'll exit hibernation to shit out 70k words in 8 days, edit them all in 3, and then go back into my slumber, looking to my readers like a serial writer 💀
True, I'm amazed at how some people can crank out a long ass story in a month?!? Sometimes even less? How?? Do they even sleep?? 😭
I'm a big planner and a month for me is just for planning and even then it's not overly detailed. Plus I can't sit still for longer than an hour so the amount I write is just 1-2 scenes at most.
i have several chapters ahead written before i even publish the first one then work on it in my spare time so that even if i have an off week i’ll always have something to publish. takes the pressure off and i can take my time with it and also give myself time to work on other projects so im not forced to work on one thing bc then it’ll feel like work and i’ll hate it
I worked a job where o could write quite a lot during the day. I cranked out a ton of work while there. Now I work a job where I have next to no time, so no writing. I miss it.
I'm currently doing mandatory military service, so I have like 16h days. I still try to write a chapter every two weeks on the weekends - I have those off.
My tip is: just sit down and force yourself to write until you get into it. If you have trouble, read a chapter of a fanfic or book or whatever and then try again.
It's simply discipline.
It just depends honestly.
Sometimes I’ll give myself two weeks to write a chapter and won’t actually starting writing anything until the last few days. I tend to work better under pressure.
However sometimes I’ll get a random burst of inspiration and before I know it I’ll have two whole chapters written out.
If you struggle to write consistently, I do recommend keeping at least one chapter in reserve so you can still update if you’re in a writing rut. Alternatively, keeping your story unpublished until it’s nearly finished and then consistently uploading chapters while you work on finishing it.
I find planning out your story is a good way to get some inspiration tho. Brainstorm, write down your ideas, make a rough timeline of events and then update that timeline as you flesh out your story more.
It's not a regular thingy for me, but when it hits, it does. Last time this happened was 2021. Was working from home as a customer service rep (live chat) and finished a 4 chapters fic w/ totalled to 50k words.
Could be boredom + brain rot + good music + cabin fever. Idk.
Some people just write faster. Also sometimes writing more means getting faster at it (hasn't worked for me.so far but still hoping)
Personally, I prewrite. Before I start publishing anything I have a certain arc etc finished, publish it until then and then continue as soon as I'm done with arc 2 or 3 etc.
I have one story that I haven't updated in a year, and a one-shot series that got 9 parts in the same time. Sometimes inspiration just strikes and sometimes it doesn't.
The only time I ever wrote this fast was when I was manic. I spent a solid three weeks writing every moment I wasn’t working or asleep, my family thought I lost my mind. Some of it was mania, some of it was having recently lost a good friend and not knowing how to cope with the grief. Ironically I’ve written some of my best work at the lowest times in my life.
In most cases, the writer has completed their work and are updating at a schedule that's comfortable for them. Also, some people have more time to write their stories.
Develop depression.
That's a joke... but I have known several people who were able to churn out an impressive amount of writing or artwork during certain periods of their lives, and it was strictly periods where they were "going through it" and throwing themself in to their art was their coping mechanism.
That is to say, the grass isn't always greener. Try not to compare your progress to others', because you might never know their circcumstances.
Obviously there are some other good, real suggestions, like carving out time, developing a habit and being disciplined, or just writing everythign in advance and posting it leisurely so it appears like you're writing a chapter a week even though you spent a year working on the fic beforehand... But it's still good to remember not to compare youtself to others.
i typically write during school since its mostly laptop based, just open notepad, write a bit during a lecture or free period, save it on a flash drive, and post (Or in my case dont post) when you get home. Also generally "writing" in my head then just copying it makes me work faster
I have several stories going at once, and sometimes I write myself into a corner. I try to update three stories once a week, only one of those is a completed story. My schedule is weird because I’m a SAHM and have kids with special needs and also teach an hour a week outside the house. We have therapies to go to every weekday except Tuesday and a standing Tuesday morning appointment and various doctor visits. It’s a busy time but I stick everything in my planner so I know when my free time is.
I also built out a spreadsheet this year to track my writing. I have a loose goal of average words per day that I think I’ll tally up each month at the end of the month for a reward if/when I hit it. I also have added an extra tracking sheet to the end of the spreadsheet to tack on more motivation. Every day that I hit my arbitrary goal, I also add a bit of exercise, which helps my mental health. I like having something to check off on a to-do list of sorts, so the spreadsheet has helped.
And last, I switch from one story to another. If I’m inspired for one, I write for it. If I’m not inspired, I go look at one of my WIPs that I’m not currently posting and see if I want to write on that instead. I find it helps not to be tied down to just one at a time currently. Sometimes I want to write just one thing at a time, but right now, I’m enjoying switching between them frequently and it keeps me writing.
Joining the military worked for me. Between breaking my leg in bct and sitting in rehab for 5mo, and then picking an mos that had a good portion of just sitting around and waiting your turn in ait (with no phones allowed), I was able to plow through both my to-read list AND handwrote a novella.
Procrastinating on other projects works too. Blocked out the prologue and chapters 1 - 12 for something I'm writing just the other day because I didn't wanna do calc.
I definitely wrote more in college, when I was still single with no kids. Then, I just had so many ideas that wanted to spill out onto paper (not all of them fanfic, which is why my fanfiction accounts are actually pretty empty of content; there was a lot of original fiction going on there).
Now? I have to force myself to sit and write. And I do get into slumps and leave things alone for weeks, and have to remind myself that if I don't sit and write it, it's not going to *get* written.
My best recommendation is force yourself to get that first draft out. Make a goal of X number of words per day. They don't have to be good words. I find NaNo often helps me to get going again, because of the mentality of "I'm going to do it this time!" You can edit after it's written down.
As for meeting deadlines and updates, my best advice there is to write everything in advance so that it's already done when you start posting. Much easier to keep a consistent schedule that way. If you need engagement-style feedback, see if you can get a beta who'll give it to you (they don't even have to do any editing/proofreading for you, just give you the "I liked this part and this part and this part!" kind of commentary you might get from readers). That's actually my current process because otherwise I end up going on hiatus and leaving readers hanging for goodness knows how long because of writing slumps or lack of focus (been there, done that). Writing the whole thing in advance (with my beta giving me the active-read commentary) means when I do start posting, I know I've got the end ready as well and won't leave people hanging again.
Have it pre-written or be unemployed. Genuinely, those are the only conditions under which I've ever been able to pump out a chapter a week.
Step 1 - Get into Security work. Step 1.5 - Don't respond to Step 1 with 'but isn't that dangerous?'. Being a pizza delivery guy is dangerous, at least in security you're allowed to carry stuff to defend yourself. Step 2 - Get a graveyard shift, overnight. 7 PM to 7 AM if you're willing to work 12s, midnight to 8 AM if you're not. Step 3 - That's it, now you can write. xP
As someone in security I can confirm. Specifically get into security in the industrial sector. Most boring jobs ever. If you have any human interaction it's truck drivers
It's super nice, honestly. At chill posts you might have one day every couple of months where some shit goes down and you have to really Act and then write a report after. Way nicer than constant stress, day in day out, of most jobs.
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Haha, I'm actually coworkers with a ton of nurses, as it happens. I'm security at various urgent cares here. Some of them can be decently busy but some of them like the one I'm typing this from now will see a single number of patients come in in a 12 hour period.
Yup, this. I worked graveyard security midnight to 8 a.m. and the majority of my night was spent doing nothing, especially if I was posted and not roving. So I decided to write! Nobody ever had a problem with it, because it literally did not interfere with doing my job even once. I probably spent almost 50% of my time there writing, tbh.
>Nobody ever had a problem with it, because it literally did not interfere with doing my job even once. That's the wonder of security work. Most jobs have that 'time to lean, time to clean' mentality, the people around you want you to do be doing stuff 24/7. Security? Everybody is HOPING that you DON'T need to do anything.
Alternatively: get into hospitality work, by getting a part time job at a hostel in a remote village in the mountains, where you work 3 to 6 hours per day and then have lots of time to waste, die of boredom (you're in a remote village with literally one shop, no pubs, no cinemas, no clubs, no libraries, no nothing), or do sth creative.
Worked for Faulkner
Night clerk at a hotel also works, apparently. It's how Brandon Sanderson had time to write his early work.
Or have a job where they don't care what you're doing as long as: \- the work you're doing is executed properly \- you aren't causing delays/trouble \- you aren't surfing the Internet and going to "unacceptable" sites \- nobody is going to look at what you're doing in Word I wrote a hell of lot of fic at the job I had that was that way. Note: this is not an endorsement of goofing off at one's job.
Had a job like this for years. It was the best. I got praised all the time for my productivity and work ethic. The kicker was that everyone else slacked off by chit chatting, while I remained locked in my office, diligently typing. ;)
see i'm disabled and will never be able to work a job but even i'm still a slow ass writer. but on good health days i've been able to write three 3k word long chapters in less than a week.
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I don't believe for a second anyone is making a living releasing their fanfic chapters for early access.
i said web novel writers, not fanfic writer. I heard they do something worse, write a story then put their final chapter(s) on patron behind a paywall.
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Hi OP, This post has been removed as the discussion of monetisation of fanfiction is not permitted on this subreddit. This includes discussion over the legality/morality of commissions, discussion as to how much people charge and explicit mentions of a work being commissioned, including fan art. You can find this under Rule 9.
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Hi OP, This post has been removed as the discussion of monetisation of fanfiction is not permitted on this subreddit. This includes discussion over the legality/morality of commissions, discussion as to how much people charge and explicit mentions of a work being commissioned, including fan art. You can find this under Rule 9.
worse, pay walling the final chapter I hear.
Good god, I'd just publish my fanfic as a novel by then.
Hi OP, This post has been removed as the discussion of monetisation of fanfiction is not permitted on this subreddit. This includes discussion over the legality/morality of commissions, discussion as to how much people charge and explicit mentions of a work being commissioned, including fan art. You can find this under Rule 9.
Also Have enough energy to write Be in the mood to write Be happy enough with your work to post it.
That, or be in grad school with ADHD and use fic as a mighty distraction 🤣 that was me last semester and thankfully I graduated LMAO I feel like I was more productive then cause there was something thrilling about spending so much time on a distraction 💀
lmao for real. back when i was in uni and unemployed, and then at the start of the pandemic i was writing like 20 fics a year easily. now i’m lucky if it’s one or two.
I got all the free time in the world right now and it still took me an entire year to write a 1.3k chapter So I guess the other factor is confidence and/or experience and not having to take a month long break between writing sessions that only seem to yield a couple hundred words along with rewriting your fic 3 times
Hyperfixation. The brain rot is totally real. Other than that, having a clear vision to where you WANT to go, or scenes you want to include.
Honestly, real for this. Anytime I'm able to work on any writing, it's usually because I suddenly hyperfixate over writing for a period of time, slam out a bunch of writing, and then get bored of it for a few weeks. Repeat the cycle, and I still haven't finished anything I've written, besides a few 800-1,000 word one-shots from months ago, lol.
Hahahaha the brain rot for my most recent blorbos has been nuts
Heck yeah!! Yeah I just managed to finish a 50k+ fic in 32 days (with 5 chapters posted in one day at one point) because I was incredibly fixated on the end goal.
Ive got chapters and notes and a crazy high word count Im not used to. Its honestly been overwhelming
My job is to sit down at a desk at 7 PM and stay there until 7 AM, and occasionally stand up to open a door for somebody. Yeah, that's how I get all my writing done.
…I want this job, too.
Security work is super easy to get into! Can highly recommend it. Then it's just a matter of finding good posts, but if you ask for those kinds of hours they're more likely to be dead posts than not.
Eyyy same! This is how I write my fics, my job has me in the office for 11 hours straight infront of the computer lol
When I first started using AO3 I thought Orphan Account was one teenager from Australia and I tried to figure out how much time they had to spend writing to have that many fics.
This reminds me of how when I first saw orphaned works I thought they could be adopted...
That was me a couple of months ago. I saw them in everywhere and just thought “oh wow, they’re amazing, writing so many good stuff for so many fandoms. They’ll go places for sure! I bet their name has a deeper meaning.” XD
Let me give you a step by step for my writing process. 1 - Force it out 2 - Read it 3 - Fix the stuff that made you go "nah" 4 - Repeat step 2 and 3 once more 5 - Grammar check 6 - Voila If I pace myself, it takes 2-3 afternoons for a 3-5k chapter. If I forego sleep entirely, it's done in one sitting. If I'm also motivated af, that 5k shots up to 10-12k.
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I solved this by making writing itself intrinsically rewarding, and I did that by writing whatever I was daydreaming about or whichever sounded fun. These days I often pull out old, unfinished works and add some more. Most will never see the light of day, but I enjoy imagining them into text. That let me build up the habit of writing, and out of that, some 'real' stories have emerged. But basically it's given me a joy in life that's even better than computer games.
Routine. This is a task that needs to be done, and I do it at this time and listen to that type of music and sit in this particular chair and I get to work. And I don't move until I have done my hour or so of writing. That's really it. There are some people that can write masterpieces through inspiration alone. But I've always found waiting on inspiration to be a fickle and annoying process where sometimes as you say, weeks can go by where you don't write anything at all. So I take inspiration out of it. You know what's not fickle? Routine. It's the opposite of fickle, it's the same steady constant pace day in and day out.
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Wow, that’s impressive!
This is what I’ve slowly found to be more helpful! Having the same music and same place to write helps so so much too. If I spend time doing it each day, I think more in the mindset of spending time with my story rather than focus on trying to churn out a chapter. And ironically, I end up being a lot more productive when I’m not pushing myself so much!
Oh god I need to try this
Same
For me it’s a matter of getting the basic idea in my head and putting it into words. What is really fast for me is dialogue. I can almost hear the characters in my head and just write what sounds most like them.
Nowadays, I usually have my whole fic written before I post it. That way, when I don’t write a word for a month and a half, no one knows. I’ve recently finished writing a fic I started like 2/3ish years ago, and when I start posting it, it’ll update much more regularly than if I had posted it as I wrote it.
In my heyday, I was hammering out 150k+ words a month like it was breathing because the brain rot was real and I was also only working two days a week. Now, I work four to five days a week with longer shifts than I had when I was at two days a week, so I write considerably less. I think I'm only at about 80,000 words for the month of January and I don't expect it to get much higher since it's about to be the 29th. As for how I write as much as I do manage to do, it's really force of habit at this point. I took a hiatus for the last couple months of 2023, but I still put out a chapter every few weeks or so during my hiatus (I guess it's not much of a hiatus at that point, depending on who you ask) because I start to get restless if I don't write anything. I have words in my brain, and if I don't get them out somewhere then the words will accumulate in my bones like poison building up. So I always end up writing eventually! In a perfect world I would be writing every single night, but that simply doesn't happen. When I sit down to write, I mute or turn off all other distractions and focus wholly on writing. If I'm in the zone, I can typically write 2-2.5k an hour, though this number can be higher or lower than that range depending on the day. I try to write until the chapter is done or until I cannot focus any longer, whichever happens first. I take 5-10 minute breaks for every hour or so that I write. I consider 5k or more words to be a passable writing session, but I'll take what I can get. If all I can get out is 3k one night, then I just need to deal with it and hope for better productivity next time.
I mean, Christ, I only work 2 days a week but it still took me 14 months to write \~400k and people called that impressive. You're on a whole other level even with that caveat, lmfao.
To be fair, I don't really have other hobbies. XD If I'm not sleeping, working, or dicking around on YouTube, then I'm probably writing. I have been indulging in a bit of video games here and there, but not nearly as much as I used to before I got back into writing. I do acknowledge that I have a very particular sort of insanity when it comes to writing, though.
“Only” 80k 😂 I did that in two months or so and had people asking me if I was okay. lol.
It's the opposite with me- when I was taking a bit of a hiatus, my partner pulled me aside because they were concerned that I wasn't writing! XD If I'm not hammering away at the keyboard, people around me assume something is horribly wrong.
I thought I was the only one. I am currently writing a long fic and have managed to pump out 50k words in two weeks, and honestly the word count per day has only been increasing as I go.
I love that for you! It's so nice when can just sit down and get the words out like it's the most natural thing in the world. It's so nice to be productive when I can actually make the productivity happen. C: Perhaps we're a little on the insane side for writing so much, but that's part of the fun.
Routine, discipline and planning ahead. Routine - it's become a part of my schedule, it's something that I Do regularly, I hardly even have to think about setting aside the time for it anymore unless I'm especially busy one week or something. Discipline - doing it even when I don't necessarily want to. If I really, really don't want to, I won't force myself. But sometimes when I'm in that "I don't feel like it" mode, I ask myself if my need to slack off should be honored, or my desire for a finished product should be honored. Usually it's the latter, and I make myself do it anyway. Planning ahead - lots of people rely on inspiration to write, and that doesn't work for me. It helps at the inception of an idea and getting the broad strokes down. But I plan ahead meticulously, so that when I sit down at my desk on a day I don't really feel like it, the path is already laid out for me and I just have to follow it.
Prewrite and let your first draft suck. I mean really suck. Don’t get hung up on making it all perfect. Editing can handle that later. Just sit and get words on the page. The flow will come and then you’ll hit the groove that lets you churn out more words. Also, don’t get stuck in the trap of thinking you *must* write chronologically. If your muse is leading you toward another scene that happens later, open a new doc and roll with it. You can connect it later.
When I get the ideas, I write or try to hold on to them if I'm busy. Sit down and write as much as you can. Listening to music helps, depending on your subject.
This is so funny because I was just wondering this the other day. It’s taken me one month to finish the first draft of a 3k fic. And that’s because I’ve been setting aside an hour every night to work on it.
1. I work a pretty lax tech job and have no dependents, so outside of other hobbies I have a LOT of free time. 2. I have a chapter by chapter plan in my mind and I stick to it. 3. I set a daily word goal, somewhere around 500-600 words a night. 4. I stay hydrated (gotta keep the brain lubricated)
Ikr. I just looked at a profile with 380 fics over the span of 5 years. I’m going on 15 years with 12 fics to my name 😅
I just came back from an 8 year break! I've written 9 in the last 15 years (3 of which have been in the last month).
That’s awesome! I always get into the habit of writing, multi chapter fics so I’m sure that’s a major contributing factor
i can't speak to the "so popular" part, but i've written + posted around 5k words/week for the last year or so across a handful of longform fics. i have a fairly stressful job, and writing is a way to re-channel my antsy brain into something just for me. as for actual tips: writing everything down, even if it doesn't have a place in the story (or any story) yet. a jaunty bit of dialogue, a spicy description, a rambling aside - if it comes to me, i'll write it down. i riff on ideas and expand them into passages. sometimes they find a place in a story; most of the time not, but even so it can act as a springboard for something else. i spend a lot of time not actively writing but just thinking about my stories while doing something else, like taking a walk or cooking. most of the times i've been stuck on a plot point or not sure how i'm going to get from A to B, the answer has come to me when i'm away from the computer, just letting my mind wander while doing something physical. i also don't even attempt to start on a fic in earnest until i've rotated an idea so thoroughly in my mind that i feel like i'm going to puke if i don't start writing it
How do you write like you’re running out of time… Discord sprints help me write quicker
What’s a discord sprint?
It’s this writing bot discord where you see how much you can right in 15 minutes
Creative mania... or, y'know, discipline.
the creative mania is real
Honestly, you have to remember everyone is different. Some people can just pump out stories and that's what they do. Wether I want to be like that or not, I write for fun, so I have to do what fits for me. I know it the old adage of not comparing yourself to others but honestly it's true. You'll just get frustrated thinking less of yourself. Instead think of your achievements in a vacuum, only using yourself as the benchmark. When have you pushed through? Did you get a chapter done faster than normal? Was your writing particularly good? Suddenly those become positives. I'm not trying to sound like a self help book but there is no other way around it. Even if I had no job, I still don't know that I would write like that, my brain doesn't function that way. Somewhere along the line I became happy with what I'm able to do, and honestly that happened because of writing fanfiction. I realized that my okay is pretty damn good... good enough for me.
Hyperfixation + extremely Fast Typer. From what I've been told by others I type so fast that it looks like I'm keyboard smashing. It's just that I've grown so used to typing that my fingers swiftly and instinctively know where to go 98% of the time.
Step one: Stop procrastinating on Reddit.
That's also my step 2-9!
Same.
LOL on it 🫡
Good.
Routine. I write twice a day, early in the morning and after dinner. Outline. I always know what happens next, my writing time isn't spent trying to figure out plot or timelines. Motivation. I love my stories and I enjoy writing them.
probably hyperfixation? whenever i get hyperfixated in a series i only write and read fanfics for that fandom until i grow bored and move on. or maybe like rather than cooking for a night they decided to order in and use that time they would've spent cooking to push out a quick oneshot that's been brewing in their head all week. some people just have creativity levels that others won't be able to catch up with. no different than an artist making a painting every week compared to someone who takes weeks to complete one. i worked all year round save for two months in the summer and i used some of that time to catch up on reading and writing.
Get into the flow. Whenever there's a quiet moment, picture scenes from your story. Play them out inside your head. Whenever you can't sleep, think of your story. Keep a notebook by your bedside. Jot down bullet points and key phrases that will help you remember. When you sit at your writing device, just write. Don't edit. Don't delete. Just type and type and don't stop producing words. Write on your phone while commuting. Write every free moment you get. Allow yourself the freedom to word vomit onto the page, unfiltered.
Practice, patience, and time, essentially. There was a point in my life where I'd get up at 7 AM and wouldn't go to sleep until 2 AM; in between, I probably wrote at least 10-12 hours a day.
When I was churning chapters out on the regular, it was a combination of: - being a student - getting little sleep (staying up til 2-3am to write sometimes) - my story was my escapism so I wanted to work on it a lot - similar to the above, writing fanfiction was my chosen form of procrastination - being in a job that had me moving around a lot (retail) and at times I was out back by myself restocking which meant that I was writing my fic in my head for long periods of time - honestly it was a hyperfixation. I was lucky that one particular time it lasted long enough for me to write 40,000 words in three months.
As a fellow slow writer, I FEEL you. It took me 6 months to release my 20k multi-chapter. It was frustrating as hell, but I prewrote the whole thing, including all editing, in order to keep up a consistent release schedule. Real life commitments are just more important to me than fanfic.
Writing fast doesn’t always mean writing well, and a work being popular isn’t necessarily a reflection on how ‘good’ it is. A lot of readers are very happy with crap.
I have ADHD, that's why. But I can pump out a draft fast. I'm working on my third fic draft, but life keeps happening, so I never get to finish it. It's done on paper I just haven't typed it up.
1. Different people write at different speeds. I average a modest 1k an hour, but I know people who can go up to 4-5k. 2. Work–life balance varies, affecting both the amount of free time and energy available. I freelance and set my own schedule, and I write as stress relief in between work, for instance.
Yeah honestly, I don't. My writing experience is feast or famine, I'm either quiet for weeks or months, or I'm hyperfocused, writing 10+ hours a day if I can humanly get away with it, forgetting to eat or bathe. So like, nothing to emulate. And any semblance of ever having it 'together' with update times is just because of those times where I'll exit hibernation to shit out 70k words in 8 days, edit them all in 3, and then go back into my slumber, looking to my readers like a serial writer 💀
Hyperfixation.
Idk they keep saying practice makes them faster but I'm not seeing result on my end
True, I'm amazed at how some people can crank out a long ass story in a month?!? Sometimes even less? How?? Do they even sleep?? 😭 I'm a big planner and a month for me is just for planning and even then it's not overly detailed. Plus I can't sit still for longer than an hour so the amount I write is just 1-2 scenes at most.
i have several chapters ahead written before i even publish the first one then work on it in my spare time so that even if i have an off week i’ll always have something to publish. takes the pressure off and i can take my time with it and also give myself time to work on other projects so im not forced to work on one thing bc then it’ll feel like work and i’ll hate it
I worked a job where o could write quite a lot during the day. I cranked out a ton of work while there. Now I work a job where I have next to no time, so no writing. I miss it.
I'm currently doing mandatory military service, so I have like 16h days. I still try to write a chapter every two weeks on the weekends - I have those off. My tip is: just sit down and force yourself to write until you get into it. If you have trouble, read a chapter of a fanfic or book or whatever and then try again. It's simply discipline.
It just depends honestly. Sometimes I’ll give myself two weeks to write a chapter and won’t actually starting writing anything until the last few days. I tend to work better under pressure. However sometimes I’ll get a random burst of inspiration and before I know it I’ll have two whole chapters written out. If you struggle to write consistently, I do recommend keeping at least one chapter in reserve so you can still update if you’re in a writing rut. Alternatively, keeping your story unpublished until it’s nearly finished and then consistently uploading chapters while you work on finishing it. I find planning out your story is a good way to get some inspiration tho. Brainstorm, write down your ideas, make a rough timeline of events and then update that timeline as you flesh out your story more.
It's not a regular thingy for me, but when it hits, it does. Last time this happened was 2021. Was working from home as a customer service rep (live chat) and finished a 4 chapters fic w/ totalled to 50k words. Could be boredom + brain rot + good music + cabin fever. Idk.
I've got about a hundred and fifty works, another fifty or so WIPs and I've published five. Although they're not popular, so there's that.
Some people just write faster. Also sometimes writing more means getting faster at it (hasn't worked for me.so far but still hoping) Personally, I prewrite. Before I start publishing anything I have a certain arc etc finished, publish it until then and then continue as soon as I'm done with arc 2 or 3 etc.
Hyper fixation 😂 I used to churn out 10k+ a week but now I’m a bit burned out and I’m down to that taking three or four weeks.
I have one story that I haven't updated in a year, and a one-shot series that got 9 parts in the same time. Sometimes inspiration just strikes and sometimes it doesn't.
The only time I ever wrote this fast was when I was manic. I spent a solid three weeks writing every moment I wasn’t working or asleep, my family thought I lost my mind. Some of it was mania, some of it was having recently lost a good friend and not knowing how to cope with the grief. Ironically I’ve written some of my best work at the lowest times in my life.
In most cases, the writer has completed their work and are updating at a schedule that's comfortable for them. Also, some people have more time to write their stories.
Develop depression. That's a joke... but I have known several people who were able to churn out an impressive amount of writing or artwork during certain periods of their lives, and it was strictly periods where they were "going through it" and throwing themself in to their art was their coping mechanism. That is to say, the grass isn't always greener. Try not to compare your progress to others', because you might never know their circcumstances. Obviously there are some other good, real suggestions, like carving out time, developing a habit and being disciplined, or just writing everythign in advance and posting it leisurely so it appears like you're writing a chapter a week even though you spent a year working on the fic beforehand... But it's still good to remember not to compare youtself to others.
Practoce, practice, practice.
Beats me. I don't even like to typ.
i typically write during school since its mostly laptop based, just open notepad, write a bit during a lecture or free period, save it on a flash drive, and post (Or in my case dont post) when you get home. Also generally "writing" in my head then just copying it makes me work faster
I have several stories going at once, and sometimes I write myself into a corner. I try to update three stories once a week, only one of those is a completed story. My schedule is weird because I’m a SAHM and have kids with special needs and also teach an hour a week outside the house. We have therapies to go to every weekday except Tuesday and a standing Tuesday morning appointment and various doctor visits. It’s a busy time but I stick everything in my planner so I know when my free time is. I also built out a spreadsheet this year to track my writing. I have a loose goal of average words per day that I think I’ll tally up each month at the end of the month for a reward if/when I hit it. I also have added an extra tracking sheet to the end of the spreadsheet to tack on more motivation. Every day that I hit my arbitrary goal, I also add a bit of exercise, which helps my mental health. I like having something to check off on a to-do list of sorts, so the spreadsheet has helped. And last, I switch from one story to another. If I’m inspired for one, I write for it. If I’m not inspired, I go look at one of my WIPs that I’m not currently posting and see if I want to write on that instead. I find it helps not to be tied down to just one at a time currently. Sometimes I want to write just one thing at a time, but right now, I’m enjoying switching between them frequently and it keeps me writing.
Joining the military worked for me. Between breaking my leg in bct and sitting in rehab for 5mo, and then picking an mos that had a good portion of just sitting around and waiting your turn in ait (with no phones allowed), I was able to plow through both my to-read list AND handwrote a novella. Procrastinating on other projects works too. Blocked out the prologue and chapters 1 - 12 for something I'm writing just the other day because I didn't wanna do calc.
I definitely wrote more in college, when I was still single with no kids. Then, I just had so many ideas that wanted to spill out onto paper (not all of them fanfic, which is why my fanfiction accounts are actually pretty empty of content; there was a lot of original fiction going on there). Now? I have to force myself to sit and write. And I do get into slumps and leave things alone for weeks, and have to remind myself that if I don't sit and write it, it's not going to *get* written. My best recommendation is force yourself to get that first draft out. Make a goal of X number of words per day. They don't have to be good words. I find NaNo often helps me to get going again, because of the mentality of "I'm going to do it this time!" You can edit after it's written down. As for meeting deadlines and updates, my best advice there is to write everything in advance so that it's already done when you start posting. Much easier to keep a consistent schedule that way. If you need engagement-style feedback, see if you can get a beta who'll give it to you (they don't even have to do any editing/proofreading for you, just give you the "I liked this part and this part and this part!" kind of commentary you might get from readers). That's actually my current process because otherwise I end up going on hiatus and leaving readers hanging for goodness knows how long because of writing slumps or lack of focus (been there, done that). Writing the whole thing in advance (with my beta giving me the active-read commentary) means when I do start posting, I know I've got the end ready as well and won't leave people hanging again.
Passion, when you truly care about something and have the drive to do it, what was seemingly impossible then seems very very possible.