4000 words today. Pretty darn good for a week day, and a Monday at that.
I took advantage of Amazon Prime Day and bought some new external hard drives so I can back up my work adequately. My current drives are getting old and I fear that they may die soon. I saved some nice money on a wireless hard drive as well as a SSD drive.
Protect your work, folks. Life happens and it would be terrible if you woke up one morning and your hard work disappeared.
I treated today as a “warm up” for Beast Mode. I don’t want to throw myself into it without warming up.
Also, there are some other things that will be happening during Beast Mode this year that I’ll need to think about, so I need to condition myself:
- family vacation, so I’m going to have to write on-the-go.
- I have four speaking engagements throughout July and August which means I’ll have to plan for those too.
- My daughter starts school right in the middle of Beast Mode, which means that the schedule I’m used to now will change drastically because it’ll be a new school with a new routine.
So, it pays to start warming up now so that if I have zero days (which I will), I’ll have really good days in between them.
I treated today as if it were Beast Mode. How many words can I write using my phone, dictation, and dictation on my phone?
4000, and I didn’t even start writing until 5PM. Not bad.
After work, I swung my microphone over and started dictating. I did 1000 words in around 20 minutes, all clean. I ran the text through my editing engine and got it super crisp and editor-ready.
Then, it was time to water my sod, so I put my Bluetooth headphones in and opened Dragon Anywhere on my phone. I dictated another chapter while watering my lawn. That took about 10 minutes and it netted me 700 words. But boy, they were sloppy. Dictation gets you considerably worse results when you can’t see the screen. I spent 15 minutes cleaning up that 700, which expanded it to about 900. I didn’t like that, but it was what it was.
After watering my sod and eating dinner, I did another dictation session and got another 1500 words in about 30 minutes. All clean and run through my editing engine.
Then I did a final session by hand and got the remaining 800ish words in about 20 minutes. Then I wrote this article.
(And then I wrote this blog post, which is another 800 words. But y’all know I don’t count blogs in my daily word count, even if they’re long.)
Someone asked how I prepare for Beast Mode. That’s the key: near seamless transition between what you’re doing so that you can pick up your manuscript anywhere.
Getting in an Uber? Get out the phone and write. Sync it when you get home.
Gotta water your lawn? Dictate while you do it.
Dictate like your life depends on it when you’re sitting at your desk.
Type with your fingers to finish everything out.
Once you’re done, you’ll have a lot of words to show for it, even if you don’t have much writing time.
4000 words in an evening. Just think of what I can do with a morning that starts at 5:30AM, and a lunch break. With perfect conditions, I could have easily hit 6000-7000 words without trying. Last year, I hit 10,000 on at least one day during Beast Mode.
Of course, the words never come that easy except on a handful of days. And they’re considerably fewer when I’m writing fiction. But you can see how they add up over a period of 90 days that gets me to 10 books or more. All you have to do is be intentional and just keep showing up. Amazing things happen when you do that.
I’m expecting a zero or near-zero word count tomorrow unless I get lucky. I’m teaching my final insurance class which will eat up my entire day and then I’ve got some stuff going on in the evening that will require my full attention, so I won’t be able to write on my phone while I’m away. But I wrote 5700 words yesterday and 4000 words today. Almost 10K in two days. I can afford a goose egg.
NEW BOOK RELEASE
Also, I forgot to share that my book, Authors, Steal This Book is permafree so anyone can download. Thanks to everyone who’s grabbed it so far.
It’s not free on Amazon because the bots haven’t price-matched it yet, but you can get a copy by downloading it from my site directly. Just click the little green button that says “Buy from Michael Directly.” You’ll get a download that contains a Book Funnel link. Use that to get it on your Kindle. It should be free on Amazon in a few days.
Get the book at www.authorlevelup.com/stealthisbook
Have a good night.
