Introduction
Last month, I took part in a 24-hour writing sprint. It’s one of my favorite yet insane writing experiences to do. It was organized by my lovely writing community, The London Writer’s Salon (LWS), and involves exactly what you think it does: sitting down at your computer and writing for 24 hours. However, the most awesome part of the experience is having the community itself. It’s almost like you’re running a marathon together over Zoom with hundreds of kind fellow writers all over the world.
I don’t know the origin of how the 24-hour sprints got started at LWS, but they do them at least twice a year. This one was to celebrate the Salon’s anniversary in April. Now that I’ve taken part in three of these 24-hour sprints, I’m here to give you the low-down.
The Benefits of a 24-Hour Writing Sprint
- A short burst of incredible productivity.
- In previous sprints, I’ve written 16,000 words towards the first draft of a novel, wrote and published a new experimental, complex type of article, and edited 10 chapters while fixing five major plotholes.
- Unparalleled creative flow
- Having hours set aside for your project allows you to get into a flow state, which can lead to great gains on complex projects, such as a novel, which requires you to hold many details in your working memory.
- There’s nowhere to rush to and nowhere else to be.
- Connection with a lively writing community
- I love writing on my own, but writing in community and supporting each other is even more fun!
- There’s built-in accountability through the Zoom chat, and it’s helped me even get to know the co-founders of LWS better, plus a strong sense of camaraderie.
- A welcome break from your daily routine
- It’s a great opportunity to break out of my stale daily life, and the sprint, in that sense, feels like a “productive holiday.”
- Challenges you while also having no strict rules
- Each time I do a sprint, I try to see how many hours I can write for. It gives me a great sense of accomplishment, and the community support makes it so much more fun and sustainable to push myself.
How does it work?
The 24-hour writing sprint is structured by giving each hour a theme. At the beginning of every hour, we celebrate writing at 8 am in each time zone around the world as the day begins. For example, in this last sprint, the first hour was themed around 8 am in Honolulu, Hawaii. The second hour was themed around 8 am in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, and the third hour was 8 am in Wellington, New Zealand. So, for me, living in Mexico City, I started the 24-hour sprint at noon, whereas for my fellow writers in London, it started at 7 pm. The group is set up in such a way that if you’re anywhere in Europe, Africa, or the Americas, you can start at a time that makes sense.
What does one hour in the writing sprint look like?
- Minutes 1-5: Welcome intro from the hosts and one "Words of Wisdom" quote.
- Minutes 5-50: Writing in silence together (45 minutes of actual writing per hour).
- Minutes 50-55: The hosts often ask two people what they are working on. There might be a quick check-in with a famous writer, like the legendary Steven Pressfield, or details on prizes and sponsors.
- Minutes 55-60: A quick break before the next session immediately starts. Just enough time to pop to the bathroom or reassure worried family members that you aren’t insane; you’re just writing!
Of course, I’m very grateful to the team at LWS for organizing such an amazing sprint. At least from my perspective, it’s far more fun to show up to a sprint than to have to organize it yourself.
What did you work on?
In my last 24-hour sprint, I decided to sit down and edit the first draft of my second novel, which is sadly still far too long at around 120,000 words. In that sprint, I was able to structure and edit the first 10 chapters or so of the book, following the Save The Cat Methodology, cut out a few thousand words, and fix at least five major plotholes.
A novel is a great thing to work on in the 24-hour sprint because, well, chances are you won’t be able to finish it, and it’s the kind of writing project where you need to keep a lot of details in your working memory. During this last sprint, I was able to uncover a lot of plotholes, especially timeline issues, which were quite annoying. But I guess it’s better to find these sooner rather than later.
During the sprint I took part in last year, I was able to write a solid 16,000 words of that second novel, a good chunk of the first draft. In another sprint in November, I wrote, edited, and published a Substack post where I analyzed research on whether age differences matter in relationships. It was fun to explore this new science-focused format and have plenty of time to do it.
In my most recent sprint, I got bored of writing my novel, so in the last hour, I started reading some articles about statistics and making notes for another project. So, I wasn’t exactly writing the entire time, but in my humble opinion, it still counts.
Okay, but how many hours did you actually write for?
In this last sprint, I wrote for 16 hours. That might seem like a lot less than 24 hours, but once you factor in sleep, it’s easy to lose quite a few hours. For me, this included 1 hour for a nap around 8-9 pm and 7 hours of sleeping from 2 am-9 am my time in Mexico City.
What is super impressive is that each time we’ve done it, about two or three people have stayed up for the whole 24 hours. Then, there are about thirty highly committed people who get in over 15 hours. Many people just joined for five hours or less, so I believe the last sprint ended up involving at least 5,000 people.
Are there any other rules?
There aren’t any strict rules. Mostly, as long as I did some writing or was focusing on my novel during each hour, I counted my attendance. One little quirk that I love is that during the sprint, people often rename themselves on Zoom and tally up the number of hours they’ve been writing for. For example, if I’ve been writing for 11 hours, I’d put “Tash — 11/24 hours 🥳” of course with a party emoji because I was having fun! The goal isn’t to be perfect or lie, and the vast majority of people do need to sleep at some point.
What was your favorite part of the 24-hour sprint?
My favorite part of these sprints, although it’s also the most exhausting part, is the point in the night which I like to call the “twilight zone.” Basically, you have some people on the call where it's super early for them, and other people on the call where it's super late for them. You have people in London who have woken up at like 6 am, and you have people like me in Mexico City who are just pushing midnight, and our energy is waning. As we didn’t have quite as many people Zooming in from Australia and East Asia, the room got quite small for a while there, with probably only 100 or so people. You end up making closer connections and sending more supportive messages in the chat to help motivate other writers. Things just get weird; I can’t quite describe it.
After being in LWS for the last three years, my other favorite part is getting to write and spend more time with my internet friends. While I might get slightly less writing done in an hour with other people than if I were just chugging alone, the benefits of having a writing community can be summed up best in this phrase:
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Plus, I get bored of just being with myself and my words all the time. It’s far more fun to check in with other writers regularly and see what they are up to.
My other favorite part is just the time expansiveness of it. It is so nice to sit down and write with no one to rush you, nowhere else to be, nothing else to do. You really get a lot done, and the flow state is awesome, even if it does get exhausting after a while.
Was there ever a point where you wanted to give up?
Of course, there was! To be honest, I ended up getting bored of working on my novel. That’s why I switched to reading those statistics articles for the last hour of the sprint. And to be honest, after a few more weeks of working on that novel, I did get sick of it, so I have moved on to other things.
This is why I would only do a 24-hour sprint with lots of other people. A 24-hour sprint all on your own, I think, would be a really grueling exercise. Don’t try this at home alone. However, there’s definitely something to be said for longer, uninterrupted evenings of writing. There are times in the day when each of us works better, so I recommend blocking off your entire calendar and having a dedicated writing time for an extended period of 4-5 hours when you’re able to. Or at least that’s something that I’d like to do more often.
Do you have any other recommendations for a successful 24-hour sprint?
- Get your writing setup ready! Whether it’s your computer, your keyboard, or your notebook, make sure you have a dedicated space and time for writing. If you get bored, you can transition from home to a cafe, but home is probably best so that you can easily use the bathroom or grab a snack.
- Make sure you minimize any other distractions and prioritize the sprint. If your friends are planning a dinner, maybe decline the invite this time. To get the benefits, you need to put aside the rest of the world for the next 24 hours. Allow yourself to sleep, but not much else. Warn your family members, friends, and pets ahead of time. If you don’t respect this time for your writing, don’t expect anyone else to either!
- Have a dedicated project in mind that you want to work on. It could be a PhD thesis, a novel, or a solo show you’re developing. Ideally, it’s something juicy and difficult and something that you’ve been wanting to do for a while so that you can actually look forward to the dedicated sprint.
- If you get stuck or bored with what you’re writing, or you start hitting a writer’s block wall, switch to something else. Work on something totally unrelated to get yourself out of a funk. Writing can take a lot of different formats. You could switch fiction for work emails or summarize other articles for research. Do whatever you can to keep the ideas flowing.
- Buy some snacks beforehand, have them close by, and even prep a meal or two beforehand. You could even set aside a bottle of something bubbly to celebrate the finish. If you’re that committed, forgo the shower! And don’t be afraid to double up on caffeine, especially in the late night hours.
- Have fun! Be sure to write supportive messages in the chat to encourage other writers, and keep going!
Conclusion: My Key Takeaways
The 24-hour writing sprint with LWS continues to teach me that even something as solitary as writing can be more fun when done in a community. Writing in silence, alone but together with a bunch of strangers and increasingly familiar faces across the internet, keeps me going.
I love that these sprints also break up my daily routine. I don’t like too much structure in my daily life, but I still get stuck working in a certain way most of the time. A 24-hour sprint is a great way to break that up. You interrupt your standard workflow with a productive, fun, deep adventure into a project that you’ve been wanting to work on for a while. It’s like taking a holiday and blocking out everything else in the world to just focus for a limited period. The rest of your normal daily life is waiting for you right when you finish the sprint. This is your time to just be, create, and write!
If you’re interested, I encourage you to be brave and join me for the next 24-hour sprint in November or April. Check out LWS’s live events page for more details. I hope to see you there, and I hope you found this article informative yet fun. Feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or TikTok to let me know what you think or if I can answer any more questions.
