 Hello, hello, writers. I'm Kristin Kiefer, author of fantasy fiction and creative writing resources. And you are listening to the Well-Sturried podcast, where I share insights, encouragement, and actionable advice designed to help you craft sensational novels and build your best writing life. Always in 30 minutes or less, so you can get back to writing, of course. Ready for the show? Let's get talking. Hello again, writers. Come on in and welcome to the Well-Sturried podcast. Once again, I am your host, Kristin Kiefer, and today is Thursday, October 21st, 2021. Today on the blog and podcast, I am excited to introduce a brand new series called Book Notes, in which I read a book on the writing craft, on creativity, on publishing or marketing, and I share with you some of my favorite quotes from the book, as well as key takeaways and a summary of the best tips and strategies that the book contains. So with Nanorimo coming up this November, that's National Novel Writing Month, I thought it would be a great time to reread and share book notes from 2000 to 10,000 by Rachel Aaron, which is also sometimes stylized as 2K to 10K, in which full-time author Rachel Aaron breaks down her key strategies for increasing her word count and her writing efficiency. So without any further ado, let's dive into today's book notes. If you'd like to read along as you listen in, visit well-sturried.com slash notes to find the link to today's episode transcript. 2000 to 10,000 by Rachel Aaron. This book is a short, actionable guide to increasing your writing efficiency. Though at times a bit inelegant, 2000 to 10,000 offers powerful productivity strategies that will increase the rate at which you plan, draft, and edit new creative projects. Who is this book for? This book is primarily for fiction writers, especially novelists. Any writer will benefit from part one of the book in which Rachel breaks down three key strategies for increasing your writing efficiency. However, this section comprises only a third of the book. The remainder showcases Rachel's best tips for planning and editing a novel with greater ease and speed. How has this book impacted my writing life? As a writer, I have a rocky relationship with the concept of productivity. For me, it brings to mind the dangerous and unhealthy aspects of hustle culture that leads so many writers and creatives to feel that they are not enough. Rachel reframes productivity as efficiency, a mindful switch that has helped me view productivity tips as a means of trimming the fat from my writing process. The point isn't to produce more for the sake of producing more. It's to avoid all the speed bumps that slow us down in the first place. In retrospect, Rachel's three key efficiency strategies seem remarkably simple. Obvious even. Yet I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only writer who has spent years too caught up in their own head to actually implement these ideas. Thanks to this book, I've finally done so, and they've made a world of difference in my process and productivity. Next up, allow me to share some of my favorite quotes from the book. Quote, writing is a very personal journey, but that doesn't mean it has to be a slow one. Quote, writing is not a performance art. So don't be afraid to let everything be a total broken mess for a while if that's what it takes to get your story right. Quote, characters are more than actors. In a good story, they are the engines whose desires push the plot forward. Quote, I'm not a temperamental artist enslaved to the whims of her muse. I am a story architect building glittering cathedrals in the desert for all the world to marvel at. With all of this introduction to the book out of the way, let's dive deep into the summary of the book, 2K to 10K, and my key takeaways. Quote, just like changing your lifestyle can help you lose a hundred pounds, changing the way you sit down to write can boost your words per hour in astonishing ways. End quote. Rachel Aaron is a full-time author who, after giving birth, found herself with newly limited writing time and energy. Already behind on a deadline, Rachel set out to find a way to increase the efficiency with which she completed her creative work. As a result, she discovered three key strategies that help her increase her daily drafting word count from 2,000 to 10,000 words. One, know what you're writing before you write it. Two, carve out more high-quality writing time. And three, ensure you're always enthusiastic about your work. Regardless of how much you're typically able to write or revise, putting Rachel's strategies into practice can help you double, if not triple or quadruple, your creative output. Let's take a look at each strategy in greater detail. Strategy one, know what you're writing before you write it. The hardest work of writing is figuring out what to write next. Writers often make the mistake of trying to do this work, figuring out how to move their stories forward in meaningful and exciting ways as they write. This approach to writing greatly decreases efficiency because, in essence, you're multitasking, trying to both craft story and write story at the same time. This can become especially inefficient should you draft your way into dead-end plotlines that ultimately need to be cut from your story altogether. If you want to write faster, the first step is to know what you're writing before you write it, Rachel advises. I'm not even talking about macro plot stuff. I mean working out the back and forth exchanges of an argument between characters, blocking out fights, jotting down fast descriptions. End quote. You don't need to become a fool on plotter to figure out what you'll write before you write it. Simply taking five minutes to sketch out ideas before beginning the actual work of writing can make a world of difference. Strategy two, carve out more high-quality writing time. To increase the quality of your writing time, you first need to collect data about the time you currently spend writing. Rachel advises tracking the following writing session data points for at least two months. The time you start writing, the time you stop writing, how many words you write or revise, where and when you wrote. After several months, analyze the data you collect. Ask yourself two key questions. How long are your most efficient writing sessions? When and where do you write most efficiently? If you're like Rachel, then you might not reach peak writing efficiency unless you write for several hours. Alternatively, you might be able to produce a similar number of words per hour, no matter how long your writing sessions. By reviewing your data, you might also discover when and where you write best, the point at which your writing inefficiency starts to wane, and the quality of but in chair time that leads to burnout the next day. In any case, use this data to optimize your daily or weekly writing sessions. Strategy three, ensure you're always enthusiastic about your work. After analyzing your writing session data, you'll likely discover that your most prolific writing days occur when you draft the scenes you're most excited to bring to life. By this same token, your writing efficiency will decrease when trying to write scenes that you find somewhat boring. Not every scene in your novel will be the most exciting scene in the world. However, you should be able to drum up some enthusiasm for what you're about to write. When you take five minutes before your writing session to figure out what you're right next, pay special attention to the little details in the scene that you're pumped to write. Use those moments as guideposts to drive your drafting momentum. If you can't conjure up any enthusiasm for a scene, then it might be time to rework it. No matter how practical, boring scenes have no place in your novel. When bad writing days crop up, view them as potential red flags. Don't beat yourself up or think there's something wrong with yourself. Instead, gently consider whether there's something amiss with your book that's undermining your enthusiasm for writing. As Rachel writes, if your goal is to become a faster writer, the single most efficient change you can make isn't actually upping your daily word count but eliminating the days when you are not writing. How to plot and edit with greater efficiency Nothing will help you figure out what to write next more effectively than planning. However, planning can look different for every writer. For Rachel, planning looks first and foremost like jotting down every scrap of a story idea in a file called Idea Bucket. From there, Rachel decides which idea to write next by asking herself whether each idea is a project she really wants to invest her time in. She knows she's ready to start developing and writing an idea if it meets at least one of the following requirements. I can't stop thinking about it. The idea practically writes itself. I can visualize the finished product. I can easily explain why people would want to read it. However, not all story ideas are worth writing. Most ideas can be transformed into a good book in the hands of a capable writer, but enthusiasm is key. Your writing time is precious, often gained at the expense of other worthwhile activities. Don't waste it on a book you don't love. To develop her novels, Rachel worked through the following process. 1. Get down what you already know. Put all of your current ideas for the story on the page to discover the gaps and holes you need to fill. 2. Develop the basics. Figure out the bare bones of your characters, plot, and setting. Then pin down your story genre to avoid tonal mishaps. 3. Fill in the holes. Begin plotting your story in earnest, skipping around as necessary, and asking what happens next with your characters' goals and motivations in mind. 4. Build a firm foundation. Ensure you really feel like you can see your story in your mind's eye. Make sure you can quote, taste the book clearly. 5. Make a timeline. Noting the dates of important events and history will help you find and fix early plot holes and pacing mishaps in your story. 6. Write out who knows what and when. Dot down a quick list to ensure your characters aren't acting on information they don't yet have. 7. Memorize your story's particulars. Study your character's descriptions, important place names, and other details that might otherwise become frustrating edits post first draft. 8. Write a scene list. Break your plot down into scenes, then group them by chapter to ensure your story flows well and consistently ramps up dramatic tension. 9. Do a boredom check. Review your scene list to ensure there aren't any slow scenes or poor pacing that would kill your enthusiasm during the drafting process. No matter how much you plot and plan your story, it's likely to change dramatically as you write. This is perfectly natural and doesn't negate the importance of planning as best fits your process. As Rachel writes in 2K to 10K, no one has all their good ideas at once, so don't be afraid to let go and just write. Plotting exists to make your life easier, not harder. But what about crafting characters? Rather than crafting specific character details, Rachel likes to allow her characters to develop naturally alongside her plot and story world. Consider trading your characters as active participants who drive your plot forward rather than passengers on the roller coaster that is your story. It doesn't hurt to nail down characters' basics first, such as the following. Their name, age, physical description, what the character likes, what the character hates, and more than anything what the character wants. However, your characters want, their goals and motivations, give them agency within the realm of your storytelling. Allow them to take the reins, harnessing that agency to tell you where your story should go next. Get to know your characters through this process. Doesn't all this planning kill creativity? Writing is an active undertaking, not a passive one, writes Rachel. Rather than waiting upon the muse to strike, she intentionally sets forth to craft, draft, and revise incredible stories. While there are no real rules for how to write a book, there are methods you'll want to follow to craft an engaging and commercially lucrative novel, and you're likely already using them. Specifically, you're likely already structuring your story based on an understanding you've gleaned from the stories you've consumed. The most pervasive story structure is the three-act structure, which looks as follows. Act one, put your characters in a tree. Act two, light the tree on fire. Act three, get your characters out of the tree. Act one, introduces your characters, world, and the beginning of your story's action. Act two is all the rising action that comprises the mountain that is your story and which your characters must climb. Act three is the peak and resolution of all that action, in which the story's mounting tension pays off and resolves. The best writers are those who understand what they're doing when they sit down to write, who understand how stories tick and seek to craft stories that do the same. As Rachel writes, if you want your writing process to be fast and reliable, it's not enough to distrust your feelings for what works. You need to know why it works and how it works if you ever want to make it work for you. End quote. However, using structure doesn't mean killing your creative instincts. Trusting your gut isn't the same as being at its mercy. Use structure to craft your stories and your gut to identify where your story isn't up to shine. Understanding structure will not only help you plan and draft your stories faster. It will also help you edit more swiftly by avoiding plot issues and or identifying those issues more quickly. On a similar note, every scene in your novel should accomplish at least three things. First, it should advance the story. Second, it should reveal new information. And third, it should pull the reader forward. If you're struggling with an overlong plot, then consider where you might combine scenes, killing at least two birds with one stone to make your scenes as powerful and purposeful as possible. Exploring this question even with a shorter novel can help you craft the best possible story. Writing highly purposeful scenes can be trickier, which makes writing more inefficient. However, quality trumps quantity with storytelling any day, so don't be afraid to slow down when necessary to create your best possible work. Finally, let's talk about how to edit with greater efficiency. Many writers profess to hating editing, but this doesn't have to be the case. Editing is writing, and if you like writing, then you can also like editing. Most writers just despise editing because it comes at the point in the process when you've already put a ton of energy into your book. You're tired, and often the work is harder, and you're just ready to be done. However, it's important to remember that editing is a skill. The more you improve your ability to edit well, the less you'll hate the process. When editing, first understand what you're trying to accomplish. You're no longer asking the question what happens next. Instead, ask how you can ensure that readers both understand and love what happens next. To improve your editing efficiency, first consider what's wrong with your book. Remember, knowledge increases productivity. Some problems will be obvious, but others will be more difficult to identify. To make the process easier, create three tools for yourself. One, a scene map. Recreate an overview of your story's scenes based on your first draft to identify plot and pacing issues. Two, a timeline. Recreate your story's timeline of events to further identify plot and pacing issues. And three, a to-do list. Organize every issue you uncover in a list, prioritizing the largest and most complex issues. When you're ready to edit, tackle your to-do list. Avoid working through your manuscript chronologically. Instead, work to resolve issues by complexity as prioritized on your to-do list. Your story's biggest issues might span multiple scenes. If you edited your novel chronologically, then you'd struggle to effectively resolve your story's more complex issues. Working out of order actually boosts your editing efficiency. After fixing all the issues on your to-do list, read through your book. At this point, your book is likely an unreadable mess, even if the plot and characters are great. Now's the time to line edit your work, polishing your prose, and fixing uncorrected text to make the book readable. When you're done, consider running the book by beta readers or your editor for additional feedback. Voila. Just like that, you have efficiently finished a brand new book. Congratulations, writer. This has been my summary and key takeaways from 2000 to 10,000 by Rachel Aaron. If you feel like you're crawling through your story, struggling for each paragraph, or simply want to get more words per day on the page without increasing the actual time you spend writing or sacrificing the quality of your work, then this is the book for you. Using the strategies outlined in this book, Rachel Aaron was able to boost her daily writing word count from an average of 2000 words to an average of over 10,000 words a day. Using these same strategies, you can also boost your writing efficiency. So if you would like to check out this book in greater detail, get a copy for yourself, then you might enjoy the affiliate links I've included for you in today's episode description or in today's episode transcript. There's a link to purchase the book on Amazon as well as a link to purchase the book on bookshop.org, which directly supports independent bookstores. Like I mentioned, both of these links are affiliate links, which mean I will earn a commission on sales made through those links at no extra cost to you. Using those links goes a long way towards supporting the podcast and supporting my work at Well-Storied as a whole. So thank you very much for using those links if you decide to give this book a try. With all of that said, I think that is everything I have for you today, writers. I hope you enjoyed this brand new feature here on the Well-Storied podcast and I'm very excited to share more book notes with you soon. Until next time, here is to increasing our writing efficiency. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Podcast Writer. I hope you found it helpful to your writing journey. If so, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode and to give the podcast a quick rating or review. Doing so goes a long way toward helping the podcast reach new writers and lets me know that you're enjoying what I'm creating. You can also give me a shout out directly on Instagram at christen underscore keeper. For additional guidance as you work to craft sensational novels and build your best writing life, be sure to head on over to www.well-storied.com where I share blog posts, workbooks, e-courses, and other helpful resources for writers. Again, that's www.well-storied.com. Thank you again for tuning into today's episode, my friend. Until next time, happy writing!