This week I’m running a regular writing session for a few people—the idea is that we meet online at 8am for a 30 minute writing sprint.
With 5 of those minutes allocated for chatting at the start/end, this is about 25 minutes of solid writing time (or one repetition of the Pomodoro technique).
The rules of the sprint are simple: write as much as you can (ideally set an aspirational word count), and do not (do not!) go backwards—this is about having thoughts, not perfecting prose. I managed 1017 words this morning; one of the others punched out 1300.
Why should we accept word count as a decent metric for this sort of exercise? One reason has to do with probability; the more we write the more we are likely to come across a few diamonds in the rough.
The more interesting reason is that setting a clear target in combination with the suspension-of-editing-rule (i.e. not going backwards) means that we are forced a little more directly to channel ‘who we are’ in our writing.
This exercise isn’t just about generating content (though that’s a nice byproduct). Rather, it’s a chance to participate in knowledgeable ideation, which is possible because we, as writers (or creators of any sort really) are not tabulae rasae writing into the void.