Welp, I’m in the midst of reorganizing my offer to boost my positioning, get me in front of the coveted PWM (players with money), and, of course, help my clients and myself back up the Brinks truck more.
One thing I need to do in order to take this offer idea from my brain to the real world is write an absolute fvckton of copy and content. And so, I started this task the only way I know how:
Burn some midnight oil, open up a blank Gdoc, and let my brain and fingers do all the magic for me.
And magic was cooked up, which gave me a massive head start on the following day’s copy, where I pumped out 2,050 words in an hour.
Now, I think burning this midnight oil helped. Not only did it let me “splurge” on the page stream-of-conscious style, but I’m also at least partially convinced that my subconscious was in a better position to process this info, form new ideas and synapses, and make me more productive. (It also didn’t hurt that I still feel joy when typing on my new Macbook.)
I could be talking out of my arse, I don’t know. Sleep-learning was exposed as a myth. But do you trust any modern day scientists? I don’t.
Anyway… back to pumping out 2,050 words in an hour.
The next morning, I sat down at my desk with a fire blazing through my fingers. And I fell back on a tried-and-true writing hack that I forget more often than I remember.
The hack?
The good ol’ 33:33 timer.
Here’s how it works:
You set your phone’s timer for 33 minutes and 33 seconds. And then you write.
No distractions.
No flip-flopping between tabs.
No looking at my phone (not even to change whichever song is on).
No fixing typos, or restructuring sentences, or editing of any kind.
Nothing.
Just pure writing, stream-of-conscious style again.
And when the timer ends?
You completely stop.
I left my office. Took my dog out. Went down a quick little YouTube rabbit hole that had nothing to do with what I spent the past 33 minutes and 33 seconds writing.
After about 7 minutes or so, I reset the timer for another 33:33 round.
Now, to be honest, I had completely outworked my brain this second time around. I finished before the timer did - but I had maybe 3 minutes left on the timer. In that time, I just started at my screen—wondering what I left out, making notes to myself, etc.
When the second timer went off—yes, I realize this makes it slightly longer than one hour—I counted the words I counted:
2,050.
Not too shabby if’n I say so myself.
Especially because this seems to be a prolific amount of writing if you believe the internet, or worse, Reddit.
All the articles and Reddit threads said your goal “words per hour” metric should be far shorter than what I hit. Some said that 100 words an hour is good. I guess it is if you don’t rely on your writing to pay your bills and feed your hangry fiance (mayhap wife by the time you’re reading this). Others said that 1,000 words per hour is cRuShInG it!
Well, I just more than doubled what most consider crushing it.
And you know what?
While I will have to edit it, mesuspects that I won’t be creating a murder scene with red ink.
Moral of the story?
If you need to write a lot of words, the 33:33 secret is the most reliable way to do that. Doing that while also ignoring other writer’s best practices (who get thrilled when they write 100 words an hour) is all you need, cully.
Don’t wanna write the words yourself?
Hit reply, and let’s chat.
John
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