Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a lover of most things physical. I do not run or jog outside or on a treadmill. I do not lift heavy weights at a gym. I do not do Pilates, or yoga, or any other solitary activity that involves bending and stretching for no purpose other than keeping me active. And yet I’ve found a level of productivity I’ve never known through sprinting.

Okay, so I’m talking about writing sprints, not dashing up a flight of stairs. But the principle is the same: quick bursts of intense activity which help you stay focused and cover more ground in a short span of time. I am part of a writing cohort through The Write Practice and a number of us have started meeting several times a week to write together. And yes, we spend some time gabbing, both before and after the sprint itself. But even with that, our time together is super productive, at least for me.

Part of it is accountability. I tell my group what I’m working on and what I want to achieve in the hour we write. When we’re done, I report in as to whether I met my goal and if not, why. And since I don’t want to be the one to say, “I was shopping on Amazon”, I spend my time in Scrivener instead.

Even when I’m feeling too distracted (as was the case this morning!) to focus on my WIP, I opt for writing-related stuff. Like working off a writing prompt. Coming up with ideas for blog posts. Brainstorming lists of names for bit characters. But while that is all justifiable, I have to be careful not to fall in the trap of substituting the work of being a writer for the writing work itself. That’s a slippery slope, and one I’ve been down too many times in my life to count.

A note about sprinting in a large group: there are groups out there, some of which have paid memberships, that regularly sponsor writing sprints. I’ve tried a number of them and they’ve ranged from very well done to someone with a Zoom link and a timer. But they are all lacking one thing that my cohort group isn’t: direct accountability. It’s nearly impossible for a writing sprint with dozens or hundreds of people participating to have any level of true accountability. And I need that. I need my fellow author Marcy asking me how it went and how much I wrote every single time. So if you’ve tried writing sprints in a large group without much success, I encourage you to find a writing community to help you meet people that you could form a small writing group with and help each other out directly.