11 Ways To Faster Writing

Develop regular practise, personal habits, focus sessions and explore outside your comfort zone to help improve your writing speed.

Do you feel your writing speed holds you back?

I’ve been making a conscious effort to improve my writing speed in the last 6 months. As a researcher by day, I’ve found it really productive and helpful, to improve my writing skills by night. Well technically morning, but I digress.

Writing can be a sloooow process if not practised regularly.

Here’s 11 approaches I’ve used to improve my writing speed in recent months. Some of them are ‘duh, obvious’ and others not so much.

I write about these in more detail on my own blog.

Type faster, for real

Can you type faster than you can think? Probably not.

According to typingtest.com, the average person types 30 words per minute. If you can type faster than average, then you can write faster than average.

Take a typing test and aim to improve the result as much as you can over the next month.

‘Writing’ is just one stage of an entire process

Last month I wrote 60,000 words. Yes, 60,000 words. It was epic. One of my takeaways, was that ‘writing’ is split into (at least) five separate parts; outlining, research, actual ‘writing’, editing and publishing.

There was absolutely no way hose, I could outline, research and write 60,000 words. Editing and publishing were out the window. When I look back it’s obvious to focus on one thing, but it took the challenge for me to see that it was the case.

If you want to get faster at writing, don’t try to outline, research, write and edit all at the same time. We all know the false promise that is multi-tasking.

Check whether you are ready for ‘writing’ before starting. Concept, done — check; research, done — check; outline, done — check. Now write.

Force quantity over quantity

It might feel unnatural to begin with, but believe me when I say that forcing writing quantity over quality is a whole different beast.

If perfectionism is the end goal, then it can still be achieved by starting out with what you consider to be lower quality material. In actual fact, because you will have explored more ideas and structures within more writing, the end result may end up better; even if you spend more time on the editing step.

Try a word writing challenge. I’d recommend 2000 words a day for a month.

Practise writing in the flow state

You’ve probably heard this one before, but writing in the ‘flow state’ is hands down the best way to get faster at writing. If you are in the flow state, the hours fly by and the words flow out.

Practise getting into and using flow mode when you write. Find out your best time of day and set up a standard routine you follow just before starting; I’d recommend coffee but there are other caffeine-free alternatives…

Start by writing how you feel at different times of the day to build up a picture of your best and worst hours.

Write every day, at the exact same time

Following on from my previous point;

Write.

Every day.

At the same time.

Even weekends.

Set an alarm and no matter what you are doing, write something. It could be a bit of your novel, or it could be a letter to your grandad. Just make it ‘conscious’.

Give yourself a time limit

Now that you are writing everyday, hopefully in your flow state, focusing on one part of the ‘writing process,’ we’re going to impose a time limit.

Having a deadline can help pile on a little pressure to finish in the time available, otherwise we get lazy and start dipping into other parts of the process, like reading another article or sneaking in a bit of editing.

My deadline comes in the form of a 4 year old getting out of bed. Must-get-as-much-done-as-possible-before-this.

Set yourself a timer and a word target. Up it a little each time. How high can you go?

Know the structure and message before you start

Ever find yourself doing a lot of writing, but it doesn’t really make sense, it doesn’t flow properly or you end up going off on a tangent?

Yup, been there. Understanding the importance of having an outline or article skeleton before writing is essential. Knowing what it is you want your article to say (i.e. the message) helps keep focus and avoids writing about unrelated topics.

Summarise a previous article (which you didn’t outline) into 4–10 key points. Does it work? Does it agree with the message you want to convey. In a blog, your headings should be able to convey the message on their own.

Free write

Most of what we write goes through a filtering process. Does this sentence have a beginning, middle and end? What’s an appropriate word to start the next sentence with? Does this go here? Wait, that’s too many questions.

Writing unfiltered where you don’t worry about structure, grammar or punctuation can help tap into what you want to say, rather than how you want to say it.

I find a notebook most conducive to unfiltered writing. Write as if your 4th grade primary school teacher isn’t looking.

Write outside your comfort zone

Normally write helpful articles? Try fiction. Normally write short stories? Try a ‘How To’ guide.

By upskilling in more challenging areas, you will be able to write faster when you head back into your comfort zone. The idea is to work on principles like story-telling, identifying your creative style and learning new approaches rather than writing a literary masterpiece.

Pretend you are 10 years old again and you’re writing a short story for a local newspaper. What are the most exciting bits to 10-year-old you?

Spice up your location

Moving around to different locations is a great way to tap into different information streams and generate idea flow.

Try a cafe, library or park crawl. Write about how each place made you feel. Were some more inspiring than others? Can you link the feelings you had with the stages of the writing process?

Practise slow writing

This one might seem counter intuitive, but bear with me.

Often, I find it is the frustration that comes with writing slow, that ultimately limits my ability to write faster.

By deliberately forcing myself to write slow, such as by using pen and paper, I try to separate out the writing from the frustration. I try to focus on my ability to be more structured and deliberate in the words I use, rather than the fact I should have written a certain number of words in the time.

The magic comes when I get back to the computer and even just the ‘feeling’ of writing faster is enough to feel more accomplished in my writing. In the longer term this feeds into a faster writing engine!

Go back to manual methods for a morning. Does it frustrate you? Use a pencil and rub out any mistakes you make, re-writing them as you go. More frustrated? Good. Now try to isolate that frustration and focus on your writing.

And there you have it. I hope that you will be inspired to try some of these approaches I myself have used over the past month in my bid to complete my 60,000 word challenge. Leave any comments below if there are other approaches you have used.

Best,

Annette