2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love

Thank you Rachel! This short publication is chock full of invaluable advice! Can’t wait to edit my first book draft while laying out the scenes and timelines of the second using your methods. Some of these ideas I had employed on my own, but now that you have written them down, I can turn them into reliable tools. Especially appreciate your nonlinear editing process, makes perfect sense!With much appreciation,Margaret Terwilliger

Don’t let the size of this book or the fact that it’s a quick read turn you away from purchasing. It’s bit-size information is packed with a huge burst of writing faster tips and guidelines..

I continually read books to improve my writing skills. This book is full of great ideas to improve your writing schedule and production. Rachel gives a lot of sound writing advice in these pages. I even found myself taking notes! There are a multiple editing mistakes that caused some distraction for me. The book could have used another pass with a proofreader, it’s not an end-all beat-all on how to write 10k words a day, but the basic concepts of the book puts you on the path to being more efficient in reaching your daily writing goals.I would recommend this book.I knocked off one star just for the editing mistakes. Since there was an entire section on "editing", I felt this should have been a top priority for the author and editor.

I felt very called out while reading this book, but that's a good thing. This is the first book about writing advice that I've ever read and I think it'll be the last. I don't think I need anything else, Aaron's armed me with more than enough.I've known that I was capable of writing 8K in a day when I'm in a writing flow, but they've always happened so rarely. I wondered why I kept getting writer's block and why I felt so unmotivated to write and Aaron broke it all down for me, clear and concise. I've always been the type to sit at my keyboard waiting for inspiration to strike. Sure I "planned" but it was in a very vague way and only done mentally. I had a general understanding of where I wanted to go in my story and I thought that was sufficient, but applying Ms. Aaron's advice shows that it wasn't. Was I really planning things out or avoiding it? Did I even really enjoy what I was writing? If not, why would anyone else enjoy reading it? I've been stagnating on chapter 3 of my story for months and wondered why I couldn't move forward. Like Aaron predicted, my writer's blocks were always because I simply didn't know something about my own story. I had all my major plot points figured out but when it came to the details, I didn't know how I got from point A to point B.Yesterday I sat myself down for 13 hours and outlined my story by hand. I got all the way to chapter 27 and now I feel that jittery, excited writing flow in a way I haven't felt in months. Having concrete outlines sounds like "duh" advice, but the way Aaron explains it puts everything in perspective. I've owned the book less than a week and it's already paid for itself a dozen times over. I'm planning to take her editing advice when I reach that stage too.I love her business-like, no fluff approach to writing. Her tone throughout the book is engaging and her love of writing is clear and contagious. You wont regret buying this book!

I am a would-be-author who was struggling for 18 months to complete my fiction story. My daily word count was poor and I was able to complete only few sentences a day. (if I wrote at all). At the start of January, I had only completed 40% of my story (btw, I didn't know it at that time) and I was starting to get desperate and wonder if I could ever finish the book. When I first started writing, I thought I would complete it within 6 months. 18 months later, I was floundering with no idea how much time it would take.Some time in early January I bought this book, hoping to find some answers, any answer to my vexation. And boy, this was manna! 2k to 10k showed me in a scientific and logical way, what I was doing wrong and more importantly, how to fix it.It took me a week to unlearn my current style of writing, and use Rachel's three-pronged approach to writing. Did it help me? From 13-JAN-2013 to 10-FEB-2013, I completed the balance 60% of the story which meant...YIPPEE! I had completed the FIRST DRAFT of my story! The story had literally blazed off the screen and my keyboard had became smokin' hot with the typing. Note that I now knew the dates I'd been writing plus the word count per day. With her method, I now knew exactly where I was in the story, what was going to happen next; and how much of the novel was complete.Now, I am writing this review in March and you might be asking what was I doing for the past 1 month. I was...Editing.I had meanwhile read Self Publishing for Fiction and it was a pretty good book. The challenge? It didn't tell you how to edit quickly. In the past one month, I was able to edit a grand total of 2 chapters. My pre-Rachel days loomed at me. I was back to square one with my hopes of Publishing still distant.I remembered that there was a chapter on Editing in 2k to 10k, but I had pooh-poohed through it, thinking that it wouldn't apply to my book. Now a month later, I went back and read through the chapter on Editing. And the scales fell off my eyes! I am using her three Editing Tools now. She said to use multiple colors to track threads. I tried that on paper, but found the highlighting feature in Word easier to do. I immediately found some continuity issues with my story and am now working on those toughest problems first.Final Thoughts: Rachel Aaron makes you so motivated in this book. You just feel like writing and writing. Its a short read, but I have gone through the book 3-4 times, and each time I have found something new and helpful. If you are stuck with your novel and don't know a way out, I PLEAD with you to read this book. My word count increased by 4x to 12x and I am sure even if you double your speed, you will be glad.If you relate to my story and can identify with it, say Yes below, then scroll up and grab this book. You will not regret it.

Much more useful is 'REVISING YOUR NOVEL; first draft to Finished Draft' by Janice Hardy.I bought the paperback of '2000-10,000' at £5.99 and it's not worth the money (don't think its worth the £2+ on Kindle. I'm not sure that I really believe any of it.10,000 words for an 8 hour day is a constant 21 words per minute. That may not sound like much, but it doesn't factor in much time for thought, never mind gazing out the window trying to come up with another word for 'dark' for two hours.The main suggestion of this book seems to be 'do all your thinking in advance and then just do typing'. I suppose you could then do 10,000 words a day for a week, but if you're ignoring the six weeks of planning, it's not actually an increase. She uses an example of writing a 95,000 word book in nine days, but then admits that she edited it 'more than any book I've ever written'.It's repetitive and a bit self-indulgent - there's too much mention of her own characters/plots etc. The style is rather juvenile, with exclamation marks and 'Bonus!'. It's also left justified rather than fully justified and that always seems very amateurish to me. My own fault for not noticing that it was self-published.I'm not sure what I was hoping for - basically I got suckered in by my own procrastination - buying a book about writing, rather than actually writing.

As other non-five star reviews have pointed out, the problem with this kind of book is that to make a blog post into a full length manual, there is a lot of more general content and diversions, which dilutes the main advice. I can understand working writers would want to turn their most popular blog posts into books, which are presumably more likely to generate revenue. The issue is that the really useful insights end up obscured by the padding. I would rather pay the same amount for an article with some clearer step by step instructions/diagrams/illustrations and save time for writing. There is also a bit of a sleight of hand here; although the actual per-day word count can be increased, this is enabled by a lot of detailed preparation and by extensive editing after these writing marathons (to be fair, there is also some good detail on editing techniques, also designed to save time). Some writers may find that diverting more time to preparation and post-production makes the process of creating a book less frustrating, but the time spent on these activities may counter-balance the overall time saving hinted at by the tagline of quintupling your typing output.

I found this book so useful, not only for the tips on how to write faster, but also because it provides a clear, no-nonsense approach that I’m sure will help me to be more organised and efficient in improving the quality of my writing. It really helped me to analyse my own process and see how I can avoid wasting time.I particularly like the advice on editing, to create an updated scene map, time line and a To Do list from the biggest issues down to the smallest. No more going through the manuscript endless times for me! A very worthwhile read - thank you Rachel. I’m going to enjoy testing this out on my second novel.

I like this book and the concepts of how to move to 10k a day. I wanted to love this book - but I'm not entirely sure I can. The book basically has 3 points - knowledge, time and enthusiasm as the factors that make you write faster and in all honesty - you need to be able to plot A LOT to do this. Nothing wrong with plotting and I'll certainly try to plot more, but I do wish there was a method in there for people who don't plot - because I'm just not sure if I can get the foresight needed to do what she's saying - plus I'm still not entirely sure how she did it - sure she tells us how the tools and mechanisms, but enthusiasm adding 3000k a day? Or whatever the figures were.......?????????? I'm super enthusiastic and I haven't added even 1000 extra words to my daily average. That being said, I liked her style, I liked her suggestions and I certainly will try them all, even if I can add an extra 1/2000 per day that would be handy. Good book, good suggestions, wish it wasn't all on the plotter side though.

I am so impressed with this book. I flew through it late in the evening after downloading it. The next morning, (today) inspired, I used a few of the tips. And guess what? Instead of my usual one thousand (edited) words, I did three thousand. The main difference was scribbling the main points of the next few chapters before writing them - I didn't know what they would be until I put pen to paper. After that, my fingers flew across the keys, and I was more creative, had more fun with the characters etc., without having to stop and work out logistics and timelines every few seconds.And, here is the real miracle, I did not stop to browse social media or to nip over the road for a Freddo! I was that engrossed. Money well spent.I almost didn't buy it, as I'm a pantser, not a plotter. But after this, a small amount of planning ahead is allowed. Doh! Slaps hand on forehead.Thanks, Rachel!