You Need To Learn To Write Faster

Writers tend to be a sentimental bunch. We talk about the beauty of our craft, the personal meaning of what we do, and say things like “I would still write even if I didn’t earn any money.” These sentiments are great, the kind of thing I write in my journal at the end of a long day, but they come with a weakness; the tendency to get so emotional writing that we fail to get any writing done.

Some people teach that this is part of the process; that to make it as a writer, you need to be willing to spend hours upon hours over your notebook or keyboard, slaving away to find the right words.

That attitude may work for some people, but it doesn’t always work. That’s because most writers aren’t fantasy fiction writers with HBO series who spend their days locked away with a computer that still runs WordStar. Most writers are writers like you or me. Some of us make our full-time income writing, some of us don’t, and all of us are looking for ways to make more money with less work.

For writers like you and me, you can think of managing a writing business like managing a factory. Factories need to produce a certain amount of product for factories to make a profit. If a factory doesn’t produce enough product, the factory starts to operate at a loss. So when factories are having trouble with production, factory managers hire specialists to come in and assess why the factory isn’t producing enough. These specialists ask themselves two questions:

Is there a way to produce better products that we can sell at a higher price?
Is there a way to produce more of the same product (so we can sell more of them)?

The truth of the matter is that every writer’s business is a factory. We can choose to produce a better product, or we can choose to produce more of it.

Most writers tend to advise other writers to produce a better product. Writers don’t want to see themselves as factory managers; we want to see ourselves as artisans, and for our writing to be seen as a work of art that deserves years or decades of work.

Unfortunately, this advice doesn’t help writers who are just getting started, at least not in the internet age, because of the way algorithms work.

Recommendation algorithms, regardless of the platform they’re on, all work the same sort of way. They search for content that is both aligned with the user’s interests and enjoyed by others.

Writers who are just getting started, however, have little to no audience. Their writing has not been enjoyed by others. So, algorithms are unlikely to recommend these articles, no matter how good they are, because they have not been enjoyed by others.

The key to getting over this barrier is production volume. As you put more writing out into the world, more people are going to stumble across your writing. As more people stumble across it, algorithms will learn that people like your writing. As long as your writing is passably good, the algorithms will start recommending your writing to others. And before you know it, you have your first thousand readers, even if your writing is not that amazing.

So many beginners try to do it the other way. They spend ten or twenty hours writing one article — but they are only able to publish a couple of times a year. They are never able to build their audience because their audience is never given a chance to find them.

People often think there’s a tradeoff between writing speed and writing quality. But what many professional writers find is that as you improve your writing speed, your writing quality improves as well.

When you think about it, this makes sense. Practice makes perfect. As you speed up the pace at which you’re able to write, you’re able to practice more often. As you practice more often, you get better at what you’re doing. Before you know it, your writing is a lot better than the writing of people who are spending ten or twenty hours an article.

Learning to write fast also has a practical benefit: if you can write fast, you don’t have to spend all that much time writing. It won’t do you any good to earn a full-time living as a writer if you write so slowly that you have to spend ten hours a day writing.

What’s most wild is that it’s easy to learn how to write quickly. All it takes is an attitude adjustment and a little practice.

How To Write Quickly

Learn to touch type

Most people type at a rate of around 30 words per minute. They use three or four fingers on each hand, developing their own idiosyncratic way of typing.

Professional typists don’t just type any which way. They type using a method called Touch Typing, a method of typing which involves using all of your fingers on each hand. And this method works; touch typists type at a rate of 90 to 110 words per minute.

Do the math. If you currently type at 30 words per minute and learn to type at 90 words per minute, you can triple your writing speed. How much more could you write if you could write three times as fast?

The best part is, it only takes two weeks to learn. Go to typingclub.com, sign up for a free account, and spend an hour or two a day taking their typing lessons. After two weeks, you’ll be typing at close to 80 words per minute.

Some people say this is a pointless improvement because they prefer to handwrite their work. Then they transcribe what they’ve written, cleaning up errors along the way. I think this is a bad way of doing things because it violates the second rule of fast writing:

Quit being a perfectionist

I’ve watched people stare at computer screens for ten solid minutes, trying to find “the perfect wording.” They don’t allow themselves to move forward with their task until they’ve found just the right word is.

The problem is, the perfect wording will probably never come. And even if it does, it will probably get removed during the editing phase. As Stephen King says, “kill your darlings.” This is what he means; stop falling in love with sentences and get on with writing.

If you find yourself looking for the perfect wording, stop. Just slap down something as a guide. You can find the right words during editing.

Stop pausing for research

When it comes to fast writing, the most important thing is flow:

In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time.

Flow, Wikipedia

When you pause for research, you break your flow state. Research by clinical psychologists indicates that getting back into a flow state can take as much as thirty minutes. So, every time you pause for research, you are risking a thirty-minute delay just to look up a particular fact or figure.

Unless a particular citation is crucial to the argument you’re making or the story you’re telling, it is not worth a half-hour diversion and needs to be saved for later.

Put your phone away

Just like pausing for research, pausing to use your phone kicks you right out of flow. Except, unlike research, there’s no upside. It’s just a distraction.

When you sit down to write, turn your phone notifications off and leave it in another room. Don’t go pick it up until you’re done writing.

Work on more than one thing at a time

Some writers feel like they have to finish the thing they’re working on before they can start another. This is a recipe for writer’s block; instead of allowing themselves to take a break from an thing and let it sit, they force themselves to do work they are too burnt out to do. Their writing gets slower and slower until it crawls to a stop, and then they are blocked.

When you feel finished with something for now, switch tasks. Start working on a fresh idea. You’ll find your writing speed and focus magically return.

Learn keyboard shortcuts for editing functions

Nothing is more annoying to the productive writer than having to stop and drag your cursor across the screen to use the undo function. Or the search bar. Or any of the other useful functions computers bring to writing. Learning the keyboard shortcuts for these (in tandem with touch typing) will drastically cut down the amount of time you spend on writing. These shortcuts work on Mac and Windows, on any program, and even in your browser window. They are:

Command (⌘) + A for “select all”
Command (⌘) + F for “find”
Command (⌘) + Z for “undo”
Command (⌘) + S for “save”
Command (⌘) + C for “copy”
Command (⌘) + V for “paste”

Turn off your TV and music

Many people like writing while they are watching TV or listening to music. But studies show these distractions reduce our ability to focus. If you allow yourself to work in silence, or with quiet instrumental music on, you will both write faster and write higher-quality words.

If you’re extra motivated, use brain.fm. The wizards over at brain.fm have formulated pseudo-music that is clinically shown to enhance your creativity, focus, and productivity. Their music comes in a variety of themes, but my favorite is Piano and Chimes & Bowls.

Ways To Practice Writing Quickly

Use The Most Dangerous Writing App

The concept is ingenious. The Most Dangerous Writing App a writing app that deletes everything you’ve written if you stop writing. You open the webpage, set a timer (just a couple minutes long), and you’re off to the races. It’s amazing how easy it is to learn to write quickly when everything you’ve written is on the line.

Use the Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro technique is simple. You set a timer and work with no distractions for 25 minutes. Every five minutes, you get a break. Every fourth break is 15 minutes. This gives your mind a regular rest while also keeping you productive. Many writers (and software engineers, and business owners, and painters, and indeed, anyone with a profession) swear by it.

Will learning to write faster turn you into a Ryan Holiday or a Hemingway? Probably not. What learning to write faster will do is cut the amount of time it takes to practice in half, allowing you to become a Holiday or Hemingway that much faster (and of course, make more money in the process).

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