If you’ve been following Writer’s Atelier or inside The Write Gym for a long time, you’ll have heard of author Kristin Durfee. We recently featured her on our Instagram, and we’ve loved seeing her pop up in our Write Brave Challenge virtual write-ins!
You’ll also know Kristin is an incredibly fast typist. Jaws drop when she reveals her word counts after a sprint. (And I’m absolutely guilty of teasing her about it! Out of love, of course!) Based on what she’s revealed to us, I’m sharing a fun, quick writing/typing exercise that will not only improve your typing speed over the long-term, but will also help you hit your daily writing goal lickety-split!
Step One: Take a Free Typing Test
Typing tests are only a minute or so long, and by the end, you’ll have an idea of how many words you can type per minute (WPM). My personal favorite typing test is this one because I’m a sucker for myths and fairy tales, and it feels closest to writing an actual story (which is what I’m typically doing when I’m typing!). Here are a few other one-minute typing tests you can try:
- This one has a fun typewriter sound, but doesn’t allow much in the way of test customization.
- This one lets you customize your test a little, and it has a nice UI.
- This one is shorter than a minute, but be warned—that means your results may be less accurate compared to a longer test.
The first time you do this, you might get seized by nerves or your fingers might not cooperate with you. That’s okay! Feel free to take the test again, or slow down a little, even if that means a smaller WPM. This isn’t about having a high WPM—it’s about knowing yourself as a writer/typist.
Step Two: Multiply Your WPM by 10
Let’s say you wrote 36 words a minute, which is considered average. That means you’ll have 360 as your magic number for the next step. Simple enough, right?
I’ll be the first to tell you that ten is an arbitrary number, but it is an easy number to multiply by. You might find when you do this on your own in the future that multiplying by eight is smarter for you, or multiplying by twelve really pushes you and helps you increase output. Think of it as your difficulty setting!
Step Three: Challenge Yourself to Beat That Word Count in an Hour
Great news: you probably can beat that word count! You’ve already proven to yourself that you can write a tenth of that in one minute, right? At the absolute maximum speed (which is not realistic, and should probably not be attempted), a person who types 36 WPM can potentially write 2,160 words in an hour. (Again, we’re not going for that though because we want to avoid putting that much stress on our precious hands.) 360 words in an hour doesn’t sound like so much when you put it in perspective, right?
What this exercise is meant to do is reframe what’s possible for you to do in a short amount of time. Often, when we think about sitting down for a writing session, we remember how much resistance we feel when we first approach the page, and how that friction can cause the session to feel like a drag. But writing doesn’t have to be long, uncomfortable hours in front of the screen. It can be just one minute of mindless typing, then one hour of focused output.
Bonus Tip: Try the Typing Games and Lessons
Hear me out. It may seem odd to choose to play typing games or take typing lessons when you could be spending that time writing, but our typing speed and the number of words we type in one sitting can affect our output. Think about it: do you feel more motivated to keep going when you look up and see you’ve written 150 words or 1,500 words?
Also, those typing games and lessons are a great way to warm up your fingers, especially if you’ve been away from your keyboard for a while.
You’ll find tons of typing games on this site!
About Kristin Durfee
Kristin Durfee is the award-winning author of SHOT (Wild Rose Press), MASS (Orange Blossom Publishing), The Four Corners Trilogy (Black Opal Books), and short stories appearing in several Thriller, Speculative, and Contemporary anthologies for adults.
She lives in Central Florida and when not enjoying the sun with her husband, son, and quirky rescue dogs, you can usually find her on a run, horseback ride, or wandering around a theme park.
She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, International Thriller Writers Association, and Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners.
