How to Write With Other Writers in Sprint Rooms
A sprint room is a writing sprint at a fixed time that several writers join at once. You get a shared countdown, a live list of who else is writing, and a chat beside your manuscript — and then everybody writes.
Rooms are scheduled, not always-open, and that is the point: the same handful of writers are in the same room at the same hour, instead of everybody dropping in alone at different times.
Sprint rooms are available in the web app (including in a mobile browser). They are not in the mobile app yet.
The schedule
Two rooms run every day:
| Room | Opens | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Midday room | 12:00 New York | 25 minutes |
| Evening room | 20:00 New York | 25 minutes |
Each room's time is shown next to its name wherever you can see it, so you can work out your own hour once and then forget about it. The countdowns everywhere in the app are relative to now, so you never have to convert anything to join.
The doors open 60 seconds before the start. That short lobby is deliberate: it is what lets people arrive together rather than trickling in mid-sprint.
Joining a room
There are two ways in:
- From Home — a pill in the Home header shows the next room, the time left, and a Join the room button once the doors are open. Hours ahead it shows Remind me instead.
- From the editor — open Write, then the Sprint Room tab in the right rail. On a narrow screen the room is a drawer you pull up from the bottom, with a slim strip showing the timer and how many writers are in.
The first time you open a room you are asked what name to appear under. The field is already filled in with a name the app picked for you — keep it, reroll it, or type your own. Contact details (an email address, a handle, a phone number) are not accepted: the room is public to everyone in it.
Once you are in, Leave puts you back out, and does not end the sprint for anybody else.
The timer runs on the app's clock rather than your device's, so everybody in the room reaches zero at the same moment.
Between sprints the room tells you when it next opens and how long that is, and shows how last time went — how many writers were in, and how many words the room wrote together.
What other writers see
Your word count while you write in the app is counted for you automatically — there is nothing to start or stop beyond joining.
The room is not a leaderboard. By default:
- Writers are listed in the order they joined. Nothing is ever sorted by word count.
- Every row is the same size.
- Other writers show how far along their own goal they are, never their absolute word count. Your own row shows your real number, because it is yours.
- The room total — everybody's words added together — is the big number.
Two settings change what the room sees, and both are off until you turn them on, in Settings → Sprint Rooms:
- Take part in the word race — an opt-in ranked view, numbered 1, 2, 3, with bars and absolute counts. It only ever includes writers who opted in, it lasts for that sprint only, and one tap leaves it. If you have not opted in you are never ranked and never shown the ranked view at all. Rankings never appear in email or notifications.
- Hide my word count — you still appear in the room and still count toward the room total; only your own number is hidden from the others.
You can also change the name you appear under from the same place. Leave the name empty and you appear under the name the app picked for you.
The room chat
Each room has its own chat. It is kept between sprints, so last night's messages in the Evening room are still there tonight — that continuity is what makes a recurring room feel like the same room. The chat shows the most recent 50 messages.
- Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) sends. Plain Enter starts a new line. That is on purpose: the chat sits beside an editor where Enter is the key you press most.
- To read or send messages you are asked for your date of birth once, and the chat is open to writers 18 and over. Everything else in the room — the timer, the roster, your word count — works either way, and so does the rest of the app.
- Hover or focus any message from another writer and a small flag appears: Report. Reported messages go to a moderator, and you get a confirmation that the report was sent. If a moderator removes a message it disappears from the chat for everybody straight away.
Be aware that the chat is visible to everyone in the room, and that it is not the place for anything you would not put in front of strangers.
Reminders
Attending a room once does not sign you up for anything. In Settings → Sprint Rooms, switch on the rooms you want to hear about, and a reminder arrives ten minutes before that room opens.
The limits are deliberate and cannot be exceeded by following more rooms:
- At most two reminders a day, from all rooms together.
- Reminders follow your own time zone.
- Nothing arrives between 22:00 and 07:00 your local time.
- If five reminders in a row do not lead to you joining, that room mutes itself and tells you so once, in the app. Switching it back on is one tap.
- Turning a room off stops that room's reminders everywhere.
There is no sprint streak and no "you missed it" notification. A sprint you did not make is not a failure the app will tell you about.
How often WriteinaClick may notify you at all lives in Settings → Notifications, which is also where you can mute sprint reminders without muting anything else — sprints are their own notification category.
Frequently asked
Can I make my own room, or a private one for my group? Not today. Rooms are shared and scheduled on purpose: extra rooms would split the same writers across more empty rooms.
Does anything I write in a sprint leave my book? No. You are writing in your own manuscript the whole time. The room sees a word count, not your words.
Is Robin in the room? No — sprint rooms are writers only. Robin stays in its own panel, a tab away.
Why is a room empty? At quiet hours it happens — the roster tells you when you are writing solo, and the timer works exactly the same.
See also: Goals & Achievements | Time Insights | Preferences | Write