For this exercise set yourself a time limit. Make it short. Make it 20 minutes if you write flash, maybe an hour if you write short stories. Pick something that will give you enough time to write a piece, but not enough to think about it. You hear me? No thinking allowed.

After you’ve set your time, set a timer.

As soon as you are ready to write, click on the cut below — no peeking before. None. Seriously, don’t even think about it or your Inner Editor will win. You will see two pictures. Pick one to write about. Give yourself a couple seconds. Seriously, seconds, not minutes. Give yourself a couple seconds to look at it and think about the story you want to tell inspired by it, then turn your timer on and go.

Start writing and don’t stop until you reach the end of the story or your timer goes off. Did you tell a whole story? Did you make it to the end before the buzzer? If not, don’t worry, we’ll do a few more of these before November to get better at the speed-writing thing. The thing is, if you set yourself a time limit you won’t have time to listen to your editor if you want to get the story done, which is what NaNo is all about, isn’t it?

Don’t revise your story. Put it away for a few weeks then, when you’ve put some distance between it and yourself you can go back to it and polish it up. For now though, it’s all about beating your Inner Editor — and quantity over quality.

Photo courtesy of Istockphoto.com

Photo courtesy of Rhonda Parrish (that’s me!)

Tags: Image Prompt, Timed Writing