Telling your story can be really tricky. Finding the time? That can feel impossible! Enter batch writing: a way to get a ton of content done and dusted, ready for a quick sprinkle of writerly glitter before it’s shared with the world.
I love batch writing. I’ve batch written for years, both creative projects like novels and professional writing such as books, blogs, emails and social media. In fact, my favourite day in the office is one where I’ve spent the entire day writing up a storm, finishing the day feeling quietly smug with a ton of content ready for editing. Batch writing is such a great way to get content out of your head and into the world. Batching enables you to write your content and tell your story without the angst. When you dedicate a decent chunk of time (a morning or a day) it offers time out of the Business as Usual and all the distractions to simply bang out your content and to knock off projects that have been lurking around your to do list for far too long.
My batch writing adventures started with NANOWRIMO, but when I launched Blue51 Communications, for the first two years I wrote a weekly blog to build up my content library, working via a batch writing process. Every month, I’d take myself somewhere lovely and write the next month’s blogs, emails and social media captions, writing in sprints. In 2020 I began leading other people through my process with the launch of my Write Here Right Now batch writing workshops and my Band of Batchers group writing program. I’m never not staggered by what people achieve when batch writing in sprints with me.
Case in point:
Over the past four years, of four workshops per year, 400,827 words have been written alongside the dulcet tones of me whispering ‘five more minutes’ as I keep people on track. How’s that for a word count?
More important to me than word count is the fact that those words represent incredible people committing to their writing, to their story, and feeling all the wonderful feels that come with getting words out of one’s head and into the world.
I’m wrapping up Write Here Right Now at the end of 2024, with the final workshop on November 22nd. Here’s a peek behind the curtain of how I’ve helped people wrangle out almost half a million words:
First up – the key to a successful batch writing session is preparation. The people who come along having followed my prep advice are almost always those who have the most successful/productive outcomes. You see, my batch writing approach is to write in sprints over a period of time. This means that when we start each sprint, you need to have a fairly clear idea of what it is you’re actually going to be writing. We want the sprint to be pure writing time, not staring out the window conceptualising time. The best way to enable that is by having created detailed outlines in advance. I’ll write more about outlining in another post, but basically, when you write in sprints, when you hit the metaphorical ‘go’ button, you can just get stuck into the writing. All the thinking’s pretty much done.
Now for the sprints: I did a ton of research as well as my own personal trial and error for timing of sprints and breaks. At the crux of things, batch writing is a workflow hack, or a productivity tool. What’s the most efficient and effective way to structure a day of writing to keep up the quality and manage the ebbs and flows of focus? I settled on 30 minute sprints with fifteen minute breaks for my workshops, but experiment on what works for you, as these are designed for a group dynamic.
The important thing to note is that for that writing sprint time, the task at hand is writing. Not researching, not editing. Close all tabs, put phones face down on the desk, tell the inner editor to bugger off, and just write. This is when we banish the empty page 1 word, 1 sentence and 1 paragraph at a time.
That inner editor banishment is critical to note: you’re writing a first draft in a sprint. Just get it out. The editing comes later and is not part of the batch process. We’re looking for momentum and output. Quality control is the next stage!
I can’t shout the praises of batch writing in sprints enough – it’s how I’ve written my books, and almost all of my content. It’s how I’ve supported other people to write their books, and I honestly can’t count how many pieces of content that are floating around the internet that started life in one of my batch writing workshops. Write Here Right Now is immersive, energising and super-productive. If you’d like to join my final workshop, please click here and nab your seat, but otherwise, have a crack at batch writing, and tell me what you think!