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Writing Timer
Decide what you are about to write, press Start and keep typing until the alarm. Count the words afterwards.
15 minutes
Spacestart / pauseRresetFfull screen+ −add or remove a minute0–9type a time
Writing sprint lengths and likely word counts
| Sprint | At 15 words a minute | At 30 words a minute | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 min | 150 words | 300 words | Warm-up, freewriting, a stuck paragraph |
| 15 min | 225 words | 450 words | The standard sprint; one beat of a scene |
| 20 min | 300 words | 600 words | A full scene or an essay section |
| 25 min | 375 words | 750 words | Sprinting with a group on a shared clock |
| 30 min | 450 words | 900 words | Long stretches once sprinting is a habit |
Rough arithmetic for a drafting pace of about 15 to 30 words per minute. Your own pace is the number that matters: record it for a week and plan with that.
How to use it
- Decide the scene or section before you touch the timer, and write one line saying what happens in it.
- Note your current word count. Tap a sprint length; 15 minutes is selected.
- Press Start and write without stopping. No backspacing, no rereading, no looking things up. Where a name or fact is missing, type TK and move on.
- At the alarm, stop and note the new count. Take a few minutes off, then run the next sprint.
What a writing sprint is
A writing sprint is a short, fixed time in which you write without stopping or editing, and then count the words. Sprints are popular in writing communities, where a group starts one clock together and compares totals at the end, and especially during National Novel Writing Month, whose goal of 50,000 words in November works out at about 1,667 words a day. At a drafting pace of 15 to 30 words a minute, that is somewhere between one and two hours of sprints.
Freewriting, Peter Elbow’s term, is the same idea used for getting unstuck: keep the pen moving, do not correct, and if nothing comes, write that nothing is coming until something does. A 10-minute freewrite before the real session often produces the first usable sentence of the day.
Why no editing
Drafting and editing pull in opposite directions. One produces sentences and the other judges them, and switching between the two every few seconds is what makes a page take an hour. The timer separates the jobs. For 15 minutes you only produce, and the judging waits for a later pass, when there is a full page to judge.
The placeholder is what makes this workable. TK is an old editors’ mark meaning “to come”, chosen because the letter pair almost never occurs in English words, so a search finds every one. Type it wherever you would otherwise stop to check a date, find a better word or name a minor character. Counting before and after gives each sprint a score, and a score is a strong reason to start the next one.
Common mistakes
- Starting the clock with no idea what the scene is. The sprint goes to staring at the cursor. Thirty seconds of planning comes first.
- Fixing typos as you go. Each correction is a small edit, and they add up to a different activity.
- Opening a browser to check a fact. Mark it TK; the research can wait for the alarm.
- Comparing your count with someone else’s. Typing speed, genre and how much you planned all change it. Compare with your own last sprint.
- Running sprint after sprint with no pause. Hands and attention both need a few minutes between rounds.
Questions people ask
How many words can you write in a 15 minute writing sprint?
At a typical drafting pace of 15 to 30 words a minute, about 225 to 450 words. Fast typists with a clear plan write more, and careful prose comes in lower.
How long should a writing sprint be?
Ten to 30 minutes. Fifteen is the usual starting point: long enough to build momentum, short enough that not stopping is realistic. Lengthen it once you reach the alarm still writing.
How many sprints does it take to write 1,667 words?
At 15 to 30 words a minute, 1,667 words take roughly 56 to 111 minutes of writing. That is about four to seven 15-minute sprints, or two to four 30-minute ones.
What is the difference between freewriting and a writing sprint?
The rule is the same: keep going and do not edit. Freewriting has no set subject and is used to loosen up or find ideas. A sprint is aimed at a specific piece of a draft and ends with a word count.
Can I use this as a word sprint timer for a group?
Yes. One person shares the screen on a call or shows the timer in full screen, everyone starts on the same Start, and each person reports a count at the alarm. Twenty-five minutes with a 5-minute break is a common group rhythm.