I know you NaNoWriMo junkies are freaking out about this right now. This. This thing of being able to write a whole novel in 1 month. You bite your nails and elbows and neighbors and whatever else you can bite, wondering, "Can I do it? Can I? Is there a magic formula?" Well, I am NOT doing NaNoWriMo. In fact, I've never done it. But I'm doing my own NaNoWriMo in that I'm writing the 1st draft of CORNERS right now, and by my calculations the whole thing will be done in 20 days.

"That is crazy," you say.

"No, it isn't," I say.

Here are the numbers for you, and then we'll discuss how I'm doing it and how you can do it too.

Yet another reader, Katya Pavlopoulos, asked me this question: "How do you do that?! 4K in one day?! Explain this sorcery to me please." Let me describe to you my current routine, or ritual, or whatever you want to call it, and see if you can extract some useful information out of it for yourself. I've blogged before about my schedule before, and it hasn't changed much since then, except now I write for longer hours. I'm actually able to break around 2pm to go pick up my son from school, come back, and get back to writing, to work till about 4 or 5pm. So here is my typical day and a bunch of tricks, or odd things, or quirky things I do, to get myself to write 4,000+ words a day, up to 5,000 on some days.

How to write your first draft in 20 days

How to write 4,000+ words a day