Endurance Writing: Where writing is more than just words on paper. It's a group thing!

The Idea: Get from A to Z of your draft with the least amount of pain and suffering possible! Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Zzz-zzip!

Wait, you're thinking... but how can this group help ME? Writing is a solitary activity, isn't it?

Hmmm.

Endurance Writing focuses more on the process of "getting it done," than the actual end product that comes out of the writing--your book. We don't claim to be expert writers... much. In fact, we're not so much concerned with content or your overall page/word count as we are with getting you to participate in the writing sprints that will help you reach that light at the end of the tunnel: A FINISHED FIRST DRAFT!

Sure--plot, formatting, and editing are important as well. But taking that first step (finishing your draft) can sometimes feel like the hardest part, and we want to help you get THERE. You'll be surprised what you can accomplish in a short amount of time.

History: Endurance Writing (aka WordSprints) was born of the needs of a small group of writers... let's just call them the Typo-holics... to write a full-length novel of approximately 70,000 words in just two weeks. (Part of a separate event known as "FastDraft," an excellent writing challenge hosted by Candy Havens on the Write_Workshop Yahoo group throughout the year.)

HOW E.W. WORKS: We all get together as a group in a Yahoo Messenger Conference Room and write as fast as we can ("sprint") for a set period of time (between 20 and 45 minutes, usually). Then we take a break (about 15 minutes), for fun discussion, chocolate, coffee, etc. Then we start all over with another sprint. Simple, right? But it works!

Something about the group synergy of this simple exercise makes words flow onto the screen like never before. Past sprinters have noted up to a 5x better writing productivity rate, when compared with (ack!) solitary writing.

So... Hey, try it. You just might like it!