TSS - The 5000 Word Week

The 5000-Word Week

A Challenge Article by Benjamin Hall

A fact which must be faced is this: Writing is hard. Sometimes the words just flow out as naturally as anything; other times you sit there staring blankly at the computer screen and think about what you’re going to do. This is a problem very much all writers face, all the time. I know how it feels. However, what I found when I participated in NaNoWriMo is this: writing with targets and deadlines helps. A lot.

With the definite goal of 50000 words in 30 days, there was a constant pressure to keep on writing… and writing… and writing. It was an amazing experience, and while what was written wasn’t exactly incredible it doesn’t matter. It’s just a first draft – and first drafts should by all means be very poor. In fact, the less you concentrate on writing well on a first draft the better – it’s much better to just let the story unfold in front of you in an amazing flurry of words and ideas on the paper.

Unfortunately, as soon as the insane November ended and December began, writing fell back to the normal pace (practically nothing at all) – without the targets and pressure I found I actually lacked the motivation to do any writing. So I decided to try and re-create the feeling of NaNoWriMo in a smaller and easier to digest challenge.

The goal is simple: You have a week, and 5000 words of your story need to be written. Need to be. It’s absolutely vital to your story that in the next week after reading this article you get 5000 words done. If you don’t do this your pace will grind to a halt as mine did, and after that happens it’s very hard to get back to writing again.

So go on. In the next 7 days write 5000 words, and get as many other people as you can to join in. Writing with competition helps a lot as well – there’s nothing like the fear of possible humiliation to get you writing along with the pressure of a deadline.

And if you don’t quite manage it, try harder next time. Every little 5000 word week will help you a lot. They add up – every other week, go for 5000 words. That gets you 10000 words a month, which leads to 120000 words in a year, and not writing at an unbearable pace. If you really want a challenge, you can go for the 10000 word week, or the 15000 word week. The more you write, the better you get. And then, when October rolls around, saunter on over to http://nanowrimo.org and sign up. You won’t regret what happens in November, trust me.

(This is the first of a series of writing challenge articles. If they are popular enough they will get their own site section, and I may start up a Monthly Challenge mailing list. If I have enough participants it’s a definite!)

-Benjamin Hall