Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

Do a little math (Just a little)
Attach your lightning rod
Focus

When I decided to publish this book, I had to learn all about ISBN numbers and cataloguing information with the National Library of Australia. On every form I had to file, I was asked for the page number of my book.

Well, I didn’t know yet. It wasn’t written yet.

So I did some math.

Six sections, three chapters each. If each chapter is ten pages, that makes 180 pages. Add the introduction and epilogue, and I’ve got 192 pages.

Sounds good to me! Thirty pages should be enough time to explain each section. And that’s how I arrived at my page count.

It was entirely arbitrary. It was an accident.

But it turned out to be the best discovery I’ve made, and the secret to breaking down your writing! Because by assigning your work a page count, you can see the overview.

For example, let’s say you wanted to write a thousand-page novel. You’ve got a story with five families and dozens of events that intertwine. You want each chapter to be short. Five pages or less. And you want each family to have equal time.

With this approach, you simply divide a thousand (pages) by five (families), which leaves 200 pages for each family. If you want five-page chapters, divide 200 (pages per family) by 5 (pages per chapter), and you’ve got 40 chapters for each family.

Now you can deliberately map each family’s trajectory, by placing the chapters in an interesting order.

Suddenly you’re in control.

And that’s the beauty of this approach.

Some chapters might go longer or shorter. And maybe you’ll adjust it as you write.

But by having that guide, suddenly your writing takes on a whole new energy. You’re no longer writing a thousand-page novel. You’re just knocking out a five-page chapter each day.

It makes the entire process of writing doable.

I call it “chunking.”