5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter

Write Faster, Write Smarter #1

by Chris Fox

Includes a free spreadsheet to help you track and improve Words Per Hour. 5,000 Words Per Hour also has a companion app available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch!

The fastest way to succeed as an author is to write more books. How do you do that with a day job, family, school or all your other time commitments? The secret is efficiency.

5K WPH will help you maximize your writing time by building effective habits that both measure and increase your writing speed.

- Create an effective writing habit
- Track and improve your Words Per Hour
- Stop the endless editing and tinkering so you can finish your draft
- Use voice dictation software to dramatically increase words per hour.

It’s time to shift your writing into high gear.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Self Help, Reference, Productivity, Audiobook, Crafts

118 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 2015

About the author

By day I am an iPhone developer architecting the app used to scope Stephen Colbert’s ear. By night I am Batman. Ok maybe not. One can dream though, right?

I’ve been writing since I was six years old and started inflicting my work on others at age 18. By age 24 people stopped running away when I approached them with a new story and shortly thereafter I published my first one in the Rifter.

Wait you’re still reading?

Ok, the facts I’m supposed to list in a bio. As of this writing I’m 38 years old and live just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in the beautiful town of Mill Valley. If you’re unsure how to find it just follow the smell of self-entitlement. Once you see the teens driving Teslas you’ll know you’re in the right place.

I live in a tiny studio that I can cross in (literally) five steps and don’t own an oven. But you know what? It’s worth it. I love developing iPhone apps and if you want to work in San Francisco you accept that rent for a tiny place costs more than most people’s mortgage.

If you and about 2 million other people start buying my books I promise to move out of Marin to a house in the redwoods up in Guerneville. No pressure. Wait that’s a lie. Pressure.

Reviews

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick review for a quick read. I read this book in about 45 minutes. It was a solid read covering writing sprints and a basic understanding of how to be more productive in one's writing practice. I though Chris Fox did a good job combining his advice on writing with his experiences, but I didn't get as much out of this book as other writing guides.

Overall score: 3/5 stars.

[Robin Hatcher]

Since I have written and published over 75 books, I can't say that I discovered anything new in this short book. And it isn't going to change me from a mostly-pantser to a full-out plotter. The "rolling plot" way of writing seems to work for me. However, I am a believer in writing daily, writing in blocks of assigned writing time, putting everything in to your time at the computer, etc.

If you want to be a writer and can't seem to get started or if you are a writer who just can't seem to be productive on a daily basis, you should read this book. It might give you a break-through.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great books. Helpful tips. I will definitely employ them. I do many of them, so it was good to get the validation. Great chapter on mind set. And congrats to Chris for changing his life.

[Cee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I find this book thoroughly American: obsessed with infinite growth, "efficiency", working for 12 hours a day, even writing on Christmas (?), and somehow the author's weight loss is relevant to this whole endeavour. Fox keeps mentioning his six figure salary - which at first I thought was related to his writing - but is actually from his job making iPhone apps, which is completely unrelated to his writing except that this book is basically one big advertisement for his app.

According to Fox,

Words per hour is the first and most important metric in the long run. There are only so many hours in the day, and if you want to make a living with this whole writing thing you need to maximize those hours. That means getting as fast as possible, which is the whole point of this book.

While getting to the end of your manuscript is certainly essential, surely the point of writing isn't to blurt out as many words as possible in a short amount of time?

Fox claims that he writes at least 5000 words EVERY day, totalling about 1.8 million words a year. Yet he also says that he is currently on a schedule for two short and two long books a year (a rough total of 450k words). This means that he allegedly writes four times as many words as he eventually publishes. Imagine writing a whole book from scratch three times, and only publishing the fourth full iteration. I'm not saying this is what his work flow looks like, but for someone who claims to be preaching efficiency, this sounds like a whole lot of lost time and effort.

Overall, I'm just not sold on this way of writing. If you really dig down into it's philosophy, what is left is quite depressing.

The key is constant, incremental progress. Each day needs to be better than the last.

While Fox makes some weak remarks about how it's fine if you have a bad day, but that doesn't take away from the fact that his method will inevitably run you into the ground. There is no such thing as endless growth for human capabilities. You will reach a plateau, one day or another. Stephen King has always been prolific, but he is not getting more and more prolific despite gaining more experience - he has reached the top of his game. Some periods will be slower than others. Some days you might only write 800 words - 800 great words that might be one of the most powerful passages of your book. Yet to Fox, this day would be a failure, because it cannot be put into his spreadsheet.

Despite having tried writing sprints, they did very little for me. All it did was make me obsessively track my amount of words (as I should be, according to Fox), at the expense of actually getting into the flow of writing.

[K.M. Weiland · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to write 5,000 words an hour, this is the book to teach you how to do it. Full of practical and practicable ideas, many of which I already use myself, although not quite to same the extreme.

[E.F. Buckles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thought provoking. The majority of these tips and suggestions for increasing writing speed sound like they could be helpful to a lot of people, depending on your writing style. Some apply to both plotters and pantsers but Fox seems to prefer hardcore plotting himself and some of the speed with which he's encouraging you to write will only possible if you know what you're writing EXTREMELY WELL ahead of time, which just won't work for all of us.

The only tip I personally would outright reject was using voice dictation to increase speed. That seems to work well for some people, but for those of us who find communication 1000 times easier in writing than in speaking it would be more a hindrance than a help. I would also die a thousand deaths if anyone overheard me dictating a horribly messy rough draft and that discomfort would freeze me up, not make me faster, so I'll never be one to apply that tip.

Otherwise, there were some excellent tips and encouragement in here, some of which I do already, and I'd say it would be worth a read for most writers. If you can apply all of this advice and it really helps you, that's great. But if you're just not a hardcore plotter (I can plot a bit when needed, but there I times I have to push forward and pants for a while or I'd stay stuck for a long time. Interestingly enough, staying stuck for long periods of time was his big critique about being a pantser, which just shows how differently each individual's brain can work., LOL.) and some of his suggestions don't work for you, that's okay too! Writing with the intent of publishing is a long game and while speed can be helpful, IMO, other writer qualities like endurance and consistency are just as important. Do what works for you!


*Note for young writers: Fox uses mild profanity throughout, so just a heads up for that.

[Casey (Indefinitely Inactive) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars

5,000 Words Per Hour really captures the spirit of just getting to writing.

I really wanted to give it 5 stars but my sibling asked me, "if you had no background knowledge, do you think this would've been as helpful?" And the answer was no. Due to prior reading, I can honestly say that having zero background would make one think that writing fast might be the most important thing about writing. And it is important but I strongly suggest having some foundation in the craft before reading this fantastic book only then do I believe it will add weight to your writing habits.

Simply put, this book is a straight-to-the-point read and the information is gold. It opens up the very real perspective of what maximising your word count can do for your writing habit and for the business side of being an author in a competitive space.

I especially appreciate the how practical this book is, with exercises at the end of every chapter that are so doable that it feels impossible not to get up and start writing.

Chris Fox seems to come from a place of empathy. I felt like he never forgot how it feels to have little consistency in writing as a habit. He makes it super easy.

I was compelled to write after each page! So to me, that is great and amazing. I hope that people will read this book and I hope that I'll have the opportunity to read more from Chris Fox in the future.

[Alexandra Gómez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Directo al punto y con ejercicios prácticos

Es un libro corto y en este caso es algo bueno. No intenta rellenar páginas con teorías extrañas o ejemplos sin valor. Va directo al punto, propone unos ejercicios y sigue construyendo sobre los aprendizajes de cada capítulo.
En mi caso, en un solo día, en 20 minutos (4 sprints) escribí lo que normalmente me tomaba 2 horas (aprox. 1200 palabras). Tal vez tengo la motivación de recién leer el libro o sea suerte de principiante, pero me interesa seguir poniendo en práctica la técnica y retar mi progreso como escritora.
Si estás interesado en ser un escritor más productivo, vale la pena darle una mirada, tal vez funcione para ti también.

[Quantum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you tried a writing sprint in which you continuously write w/o stopping typing--and w/o being distracted and w/o going back and fixing anything including typos--for a duration of somewhere between 5 - 30 min?

If not, then read it, practice it. You won't be sorry. I already started on 5-minute sprints.

It's not a quick fix. It's not terribly new either--in fact, he draws on a lot of other areas-- exercise interval training, programming agile development, continuous improvement (originating from Deming's ideas (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5... applies it to writing and he tells his ideas in an entertaining way. He does say that you have to have some semblance of an overall novel plan and a pretty good idea of what to write in a scene before starting.

Also, you have to measure how many words you finish in a sprint so that you're encouraged when you see your rate increasing and you have some metric to measure. It's an iterative process that promotes continuous improvement because you're completing an entire product from beginning to end and you can see all the issues.

Then after finishing the MS, you have two editing phases: (1) a content edit--basically, a developmental edit where you fix plot and character, even add in full scenes; (2) proofreading. After which you can send it to alpha readers.

I think that this makes sense because then you've broken the process into discrete components. This, he argues, is more efficient and effective than doing any editing as you go.

The one thing that I don't think he describes enough is how to integrate the outlining, scene breakdown, and writing craft (paragraph-, phrase-, word-level) quality into this continuous improvement process. I think that at the end of the sprint or a series of sprints, you need to have a retrospective to asses the writing craft quality and some way of measuring it--like how many corrections you make and what kind. Also, you have to know what better craft is--most likely learned from books on craft, but also from other people and trial and error.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some excellent tips. I of course read it right through and have not done any of the exercises at this stage, because I am too busy outlining my next novel. But I will certainly try them and see what they do for me.

Here's one quote which I thought was a gem:

Many writers have a psychological hangup that is perpetrated by the traditional publishing world. If you write fast then you must write crap, right? That is patently false. Your ability to wordsmith is not diminished by writing quickly. Writing 5,000 words per hour doesn't mean that people won't want to read your stories. Again, quite the opposite.

The faster you can crank out words, the more times you can iterate. Each iteration teaches you something new about writing, and you will improve far, far more quickly than the guy who tinkers with every word and only cranks out a novel once every three years. Writing quickly and completing projects teaches you parts of the craft that can only be learned through experience.

The gal who's been writing the same chapter for two months might find just the right words, but you'll have learned how to convey emotion, show motivation, how to describe a scene, how to craft dialogue, and a dozen other skills she's never even considered because she's written a grand total of 20,000 words in her entire career. So give yourself over to the process. Master writing quickly.

While I don't know if I'll ever get to the point of writing multiple thousands of words per hour (I'd be thrilled to hit 2,000/hour) I think the above is absolutely brilliant advice. There are things about my own particular writing process that slow me down - I usually need seven or eight internet tabs open to answer the nigglesome research questions I may have about Byzantine court ceremony or (currently) medieval Nubian textiles - and yet, I can confirm that the more wordcount I've managed to pack into any given year on more projects, the better my writing has become.

[Melissa McShane]

I got the 2019 NaNoWriMo Storybundle and this was in it. I read it because despite being a very fast writer, I'm always looking for tips for improvement. Most of the advice this book offers is good, and it suggests not only ways to improve writing speed, but how to stop futzing around with your book and actually complete it. On the other hand, it turns out I'm already doing what he suggests (for the most part) and improving my speed is going to be a matter of learning to type faster and/or dictate. So while I agree with his premise, it wasn't really useful to me, which is why I'm not rating it.

If I were rating it, I'd ding it a star for perpetuating the "the first draft is crap" nonsense. The principle behind this is sound; writing with one eye on how perfect your writing is, or heavily revising as you go, is the way to never finish anything. But suggesting that it's okay to write poorly, to not put your very best into what you're writing, is a different kind of trap. And stating the principle in this way only leads to sloppiness and discouragement, because who wants to read back over what they've written once they're finished and see garbage? I prefer to state this principle as "don't obsess over perfection."

On the whole, however, I think Chris Fox and I have enough writing philosophy in common that I'll probably look for more of his writing craft books.

[G.R. Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is motivational and may be doable... I might give it a go.

[Jayna Baas]

Not a fan of the profanity sprinkled throughout, but I can’t believe how helpful the microsprints have been just in the first few days that I’ve done them. Some of the other techniques don’t apply to the way I write, so I’m not going to leave a rating, but I give a solid five stars for the motivation this short read gave me to explore the power of writing sprints. I appreciate Fox’s brief explanations of the neuroscience of sprints and how writing faster rather counterintuitively makes for better, stronger writing. I’m nowhere near 5,000 words per hour, but I’m establishing a basis for consistent daily numbers and finding my sweet spot for both sprint length and best writing music. Even if I don’t do this every day, I have the tools to fall back on. Highly recommended for writers who don’t have (or don’t think they have) much time to write and wish they could be more consistent.

[Suz Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read in Chris Fox's Write Faster, Write Smarter series. Like the Lifelong Writing Habit, I found 5,000 Words Per Hour a fast and enjoyable read, packed with useful and easily implementable advice. Fox also includes the excercises at the back of the book to allow the reader to access them easily. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on mindset. I look forward to reading the other books in this series and hope that Fox continues to release more series titles.

[C.L. Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really excited to try some of the methods outlined by Chris. I am a pantser, and I'm also an editor by profession, so resisting the urge to go back and make changes, fact check, or correct typos is exceptionally hard. It's so hard that I just had to backspace and change 'very hard' to 'exceptionally hard' because it didn't feel like a strong enough description! However, I am going to try this method out as soon as I read Chris's other book on plotting. Hopefully, going in with a full arsenal will help me become a faster writer and one who can plan a series out instead of having no idea where it will go next! I do think some of the things mentioned in this book will be much harder for some people to do. Being the mother of two small children in a house where I write and do work in the laundry room makes finding a sacred space to write and time to write more of a challenge. But I know I can be done!

[Chele Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable and helpful

I read through this on the bus to and from work, and so haven't done all of the exercises yet, but I'm setting it all up and did my first three sprints. The fact he mentioned that I might be sitting in a bus and not able to do the exercises right then did creep me out a little (how did he know??)
All in all, a short but useful little book that is all about doing, not just theory and pretty words. Would recommend it to other writers.

[Jolie Pre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for increasing output and speed. In addition, the author shares some personal thoughts about how he achieved a better life. Highly recommended. Be sure to download the app, as well. (Not required, but I'm glad I did.)

[Nikki Caine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review

Like the pomodoro technique this book is about setting timed periods to work. In this case it's timed writing. Nothing earth shattering here but follow the exercises and it will work for you

[Varun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, lean to-the-point book

It's a lean to-the-point book with very specific key takeaways. Author has openly shared tools and techniques. Tracking Spreadsheet, and dragon dance tool were my major learnings. If you're an author, the promise behind this book is powerful.

[Emmeline Lock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, fast information. Sensible, doable stuff.

[Brianne Wik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Motivational and Concrete Steps

Super fast read, as in short and sweet, but this will become a book I reference often. I loved the concrete steps, the tangible applications, the measuring tips and resources, and the overall mindset vibe of this book.

Indie authors especially, pick up and read this book. Obviously, this book is great if you want to increase your writing speed, but it's also spectacular if you're feeling down about your slow progress (and maybe even comparing yourself to other authors).

I highly recommend this for indie fiction writers looking to improve their overall craft and grow their business.

[Kristin Schmucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick read with practical tips.

[Jery Schober · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great advice about what you really need to write faster, nicely written. Loved the last chapter about mindset. A short book, but it says everything it needs to say and does not gloss over the fact that it takes hard work to succeed.
Can't wait to implement the new strategies. Recommended for every writer who wants to raise their wordcount and developd a new mindset.

[Nhat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Books like this explain why self-publishing had become the dump spot for people who try to make a quick buck. With books titled 5000 Words per Hour, Write to Market, and Launch to Market, Chris Fox himself is the grandmaster of the fiction mill. He sells the dream that people can vomit up drafts after drafts of thoughtless wordsmithing while patting them in the back convincing what they just hurled into the page is of any quality. 

To start with, he advocates something he called "Writing Sprint" where you sit for a predetermined amount of time (start with 5 minutes) and write quickly, nonstop, no edit. You are then supposed to increase this writing sprints, building stamina as he called it and no doubt your writing speed will improve, your output only limited by how fast you can type. Granted, he argued that to write quickly, you need to be a plotter and know exactly what to write before you even start. I first learned this tip by reading Rachel Aaron's book and I agree that it works. It sounds logical right? You're not supposed to edit on your first draft, and the general edict is that the first draft always sucks, right? 

If you write 5000 words per hour, that's 80 something words per minute consistently without pause, then your draft must suck massively. But that's fine because it's the first draft. But further down the book Fox started talking about edits, and how his quantity tripled when he edits. Not only is the first draft written thoughtlessly, little consideration is put into revision. He argued that writing like this makes you a better writer, because you can go through the draft faster then the others therefore you will learn more storytelling skills because you can go over the draft more often than the others, which makes sense but increasing the number of revisions you do renders his argument null, because what's the purpose of learning to write fast when your final output takes the same amount of time as someone who ponders when they write and thus reduce the amount of work they need to do during revision? 

And that doesn't even take into consideration the language you're writing with. Not to say you need to write like a poet but what sets a writer apart from people who don't write is the deft usage of language to convey meaning through the methods of word selection, structuring sentences and paying attention to rhythm, beat and economy. How can you do this well if you write your novel faster than someone writing a troll post on the internet? Then fly over it with cursory edits in order to flood the self-publishing market with series after series of writing that can barely meet even fan fiction standard. 

These types you see a lot on Amazon Kindle store. Young "writers" with massive bibliography each written in the span of a weekend, thrown on a spellchecker, slapped on a cover then sold because people like Chris Fox told them that they, too, can make lots of money if they "write" fast enough. Granted, he doesn't talk about money in this book, but one look at his author profile is telling enough. He's 38 with a 24 ****ing published novels. 24! Before 40 years old! Also in the book he stated that he still had a day job, so let me reiterate this: he's a 38 year old man who had written and published 24 novels which he wrote in his pastime. He even had a publishing label: Chris Fox Writes Llc. No wonder he's the messiah for the self-pub get rich quick crowd. 

In the book, he often referenced Brandon Sanderson as a success story who writes fast. But Brandon Sanderson wrote many novels before he got published, he wrote at least 4 hours per day, for each book he went through a lot of drafts, and there was a live recording of his writing a few years back where you get to see a live screen capture of his drafting process - he types slowly and he ponders over the sentence, he's selective in what he says. And his daily output is around 3000 words, so obviously he's not the poster boy for what Chris Fox preaches. 

With that aside, this had been a very depressing book, which solidifies my history of rarely buying anything from the Kindle store. Not to say self-published books are terrible by default, I have read some excellent ones but I highly doubt the authors would follow Fox's advice.

[Sincerae Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This little ebook was written in a lively manner.

However, it turns out that in my case it is only partially useful because my longer writing, outside of blogging and writing reviews on here, is all done in handwritten form first. I can really get into the feel and emotion of writing short fiction or poetry if I write it all out by hand initially. Being as messy as I like is a plus for me. Typing from the start gives me a feeling of being restricted.

This book is directed more at writers who type out everything initially. My style is to first commit to paper longhand; then I go back and type and edit. Presently, I'm in the middle of such a process with three long short stories (possibly noveletes) on my plate that I plan to self publish in the coming months.

The final chapter which did not include exercises to increase daily and weekly word count was about mindset, a pep talk about setting positive goals and how to made beneficial changes in one's writing and overall life. As applies to my situation, it was the best chapter.

If you want to be a more productive writer, whether you type or write out your work on a yellow legal pad in the manner of Maya Angelou, 5,000 Words Per Hour is a pretty good book.

[Stephanie Bibb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though I considered myself fairly fast at writing, I'd read good reviews of 5,000 Words Per Hour and had a chance to get it free if I signed up for Chris Fox's non-fiction newsletter. Since I was looking for a writing-related book to read, I decided to give it a shot.While it's too soon to see results, I've gone ahead and started trying to track my time and word counts. At the moment I'm still working primarily on editing, so seeing how many written words per hour I can manage is going to take a while. At the same time, it has been useful for me to see how much time I'm actually putting into my writing and editing per day, and this little book has some useful information. Short and informative, it could be useful if you're looking for ways to boost writing productivity and track your progress.

[Rissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Write 5000 words an hour⭐️
Can I write 5000 words an hour? No. Its a process. Maybe I will get there.
But what i really liked about this book was that it was quick and to the point with information you have probably heard but its always nice to have a reminder.


Notes to take away...
Write every day.
Track how many words and how long youve written.
Create a spot for writing and only for writing. It will help you get in the writing mood.
Clear all distractions.

General plot. Who is your protagonist? Who’s your antagonist? What is the major conflict between them and why are they at odds with each other? What is your epic ending?

Ask Why. Your character does some thing, why? Your character kissing someone, why? How they dress what they do every little thing about them and everything about the world around them why give it meaning.

[Iseult Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It works

Great book advocating discipline and being prepared. Not new things, of course, but very well laid out and described by the author. Best of all, his exercises really work. I’m now writing more in a day than I ever thought possible without spending hours and hours at the computer.

[Katherine Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource for all writers to increase writing output. Quick read.

[Amanda Alexandre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Habit. Discipline. Voice dictation. Start with micro-sprints of 5 minutes. Repeat and track your progress. Increase your Sprint time to 1 hour. Have a victorious mindset.