How To Become A Word War Expert

If you've been around the writing world for any amount of time you're probably familiar with this term - "word wars". But what exactly are these mysterious bouts of literary aggression? It seems like all too many people (particularly us newbies who have no idea what they're doing) are unfamiliar with this wonderful concept. So please, if you've been baffled by this term in the past, allow me to elaborate.

The "word war" is a method used by many writers to increase their productivity and/or conquer writer's block. Particularly common during NaNoWriMo, here's how these little beauties work:

1. Get some people. You find a writer friend (or two or three) and decide to essentially "race" to see who can write the most words in a given amount of a time.

Pro tip: If you don't have any writer friends handy, check online hotspots (such as the NaNoWriMo forums) and other writing associated sites to find like minded people. Even on the off seasons I've seen sprints on NaNo, Facebook groups, and even blogs. There's more writers in the world than you think and trust me, they all need more incentive to be productive.

2. Set your times. If you're doing this with writers who aren't currently in the room with you (as is usually the case), you would say, for example, that you're going for 15 minutes at the :00 (as saying "How about we go at 3:30?" tends to throw people off unless you include the timezone).

3. Write like crazy! Once the set time rolls around write as much and as fast as you possibly can! Word wars may be great for productivity and pushing past blocks but that only works if you actually write something during them!

Note: Word wars can be however long you want them to be (15-30 minutes is the usual range) but the longer the war, the harder it is to write without stopping. Just keep that in mind as you're playing around with them.

4. Regroup. Once your set time is up, everyone comes back together and tells how much they wrote. Word wars aren't actually competitive (no shame if you're a slower typer) but something about knowing that you and another person have agreed to write with reckless abandon for a given amount of time really helps you get the words rolling. And since you're not supposed to pause (though, believe me, your cat will always wait until you start a word war to walk across your keyboard), you usually get a lot more words sprinting than otherwise.

5. Repeat! Now that you've done one word war, go ahead and start another! These little beauties of productivity are for all occasions and I guarantee you that there will always be someone else who wants to sprint with you.

Now that you're a word war expert, get out there and start typing!