Travel Writing Sprint

I’ve taken part in NaNoWriMo before a couple of times, but haven’t completed a month-long writing sprint before on Facebook, but I joined fellow travel writer and self-published author, Jon Doolan, in the travel writers’ sprint in his Adventure Writers’ Club. I wrote about my Day One progress here, and how I use Scrivener to track my word count, but I forgot to mention that I hosted Jon in my Author Interview series last year, so if you want to find out more about his writing and self-publishing journey, take a read.

Writing Sprint Progress

We’re ten days into the sprint, and I’ve had some fabulous days, and some pretty rubbish ones (if I’m honest!) But to be sitting here on day ten with just over 14k words under my belt, feel like a good beginning.

I started the writing sprint by setting a 30k goal for January, but after some stellar first days, I realized that I needed a longer book to fit in all the content I wanted to include, so I raised my target to 60k words for January.

Of course, I then hit a dry-patch and I’m behind target.

We’re ten days in, so theoretically I could be at 20k already, but 6k isn’t too many to catch up, so if I just get my head-together today, I know I can do it.

Don’t feel like writing?

There are days when I struggle to keep working on my Cambodia Travel guide. It’s specific content with a narrow scope, and sometimes I’d rather just write a blog post, or catch up on a Netflix episode. But on those days when I just can’t get in the right mindset to work on my current book, I do a 20 minute freewriting session.

Your writing skills are muscles that need to be exercised every day.

Marathon runners don’t run a marathon every day, they do other workouts too. They take a gentle job, they do some ab work, maybe just some stretching to relive their aching muscles.

Same goes for writers.

Your writing muscles need exercising every day

You may want to work on your current but, so rather than having a “no writing” day, and then beating yourself up about it. Put your current book project aside, and do a 20 minute freewriting session instead.

This freewriting session will exercise that creative part of your brain that has probably been laying dormant all day—a bit like a dog laying in the corner waiting for his walk!

Once you complete a 20 minute session, you may find yourself inspired to write some more, and maybe even be in the right mindset to work on your book. Or maybe not—and that’s still ok. As long as you’ve committed to a writing session, and completed 20 minutes of writing, you’ve exercised your writing muscles for the day. Pat yourself on the back, and go back to you life, confident in the knowledge that you’ve made a commitment to being a writer (and author).

Everyone has 20 minutes in their day available for a freewriting session. If you say you haven’t, I call bullshit! How much time did you spend on social media, how much TV did you watch, how much time did you spend in line or waiting around for the next thing in your life to happen.

You owe it to yourself to make time for your writing! Just 20 minutes a day, is all you need to do your writer workout.

If you want some motivation and a community spirit to support your writing dream, join me, Jon and the other travel writers on the 30 day sprint, it starts at the beginning of each month, but you can join in any time. It’s never too late to start creating.

Travel Writing Prompts

I’ve created ten free Travel Writing Prompt workbooks you can use during your freewriting session. Don’t let “I don’t know what to write about” get in the way spending 20 minutes to write. Visit the page below to view the different workbooks (each with ten travel writing prompts in them).

Let me know what hurdles are standing in your way of becoming a published author, and I’ll do my best to encourage and inspire you to reach your goals.