The Importance of the Writing Process
The amount of words you can type at any given time depends on how fast you can write. This should be obvious.
But how fast you write depends on the process by which you write.
To produce a certain number of words, you have to follow a certain writing flow.
When all is said and done, the writing process you select plays a major role in your overall writing speed.
No matter how much you obsess about your writing speed, it seems that nothing is going to improve it. You want to write faster, but it seems like you have hit a wall.
But by selecting a good method of writing, you remedy this situation. Each writing session does not have to end in frustration.
Keep in mind that this is not about your writing skills per se. It’s a process instead of skills.
It’s not that hard to understand how this mental state can help jack up your output.
Thus, your overall word count is a reflection of the state of writing flow (or lack of it) that you have achieved.
Be mindful of your habits when writing stressed or under pressure.
Different people have different writing habits.
Your habits determine your writing speed
It’s fairly common to write while sitting in front of your computer, but some writers use a standing desk because they value their health.
On the other hand, some are even more comfortable writing while lying down.
Some writers struggle with a blank page and then enter a creative state where they can quickly.
It seems that they’ve overcome writer’s block all of a sudden, and they write faster than they normally do.
They never reach a point where they feel that they’re staring at a blank page, unable to do much of anything.
They also don’t suffer from a situation where they stop writing in mid-sentence and struggle with ideas. They’re able to achieve a writing flow that is smooth from the beginning.
They can write every time without difficulties. Difficult writing projects don’t faze them.
These writers write every day, even if it’s gibberish. They don’t mind writing mostly crap as long as they get into the writing habit because out it can emerge certain gems.
Either you are struggling in the beginning, and you just want to write faster but can’t. Or, you’re able to produce writings fast, but you want to increase your output’s quality.
Key Writing Tips That Help You Write Faster
Here are some practical tips that you can adopt that will help you write fast and save time.
With these tips, you can knock out one blog post after another even though you are hand typing or handwriting everything.
These tips have less to do with your typing speed and more to do with techniques that you can use regardless of the particular process that you pick.
Write Drunk
I know that might sound crazy, but a lot of the time, people struggle with any kind of writing because they feel obliged to follow so many rules.
It’s as if their obsession with producing quality stuff gets in the way of them just getting stuff off their chest. Their writing slows down tremendously.
Why?
It doesn’t matter if they’re writing from a pen or they’re doing dictation blogging. They feel that their output must be absolutely perfect.
It’s as if there is this wall that they just keep hitting, and their dreams of writing faster just don’t materialize.
Pretend that nothing will go wrong
Stop worrying if your blog post looks will look like it was hurried and quickly put together
Stop worrying about any negative consequences of your efforts at writing quickly.
Just focus on getting stuff off your chest.
For now, ignore the spell checker. We’ll come back to that later.
It doesn’t matter how much sleep you got the night before. You can be a complete and total night owl and still reduce your writing session length dramatically while preserving quality.
Eliminate this emotional intimidation that you are forcing on yourself.
This is one of the most common mental blocks that prevent writers from boosting their output.
Just pretend that there are no rules. Just focus on your typing speed and stop obsessing about the quality of your initial drafts.
Write During Your Golden Hours
What are golden hours? These are the blocks of time in a typical 24-hour period where you are can write faster.
Maybe the ideas just come to you as you go through your notes. Maybe you are able to belt out good stuff because you are emotionally in the right place.
You really can’t quite put your finger on it. You just have an “ideal” writing session at certain periods of any given day.
Stick to that time frame as much as you can.
Write as fast as you can while maintaining your focus.
This is one of the most powerful ways you can overcome whatever mental blocks are preventing you from writing quickly.
It’s as if your fingers simply glide on the keyboard. This goes a long way in boosting your overall word count.
How Do You Write Neatly and Fast?
If you are writing manually and want to do it faster, you have to be focused and disciplined. Your writing session has to take place within a fixed period of time.
As I’ve mentioned above, there are certain times of the day where it’s easier for you to focus. It’s as if all your quality is produced at those times.
Don’t reach a point where you’re writing just to get stuff when you are under so much pressure. It’s as if you are squeezing blood out of a rock.
As you can imagine, you’re not going to be producing a great article or an awesome book chapter if you are putting that much pressure on yourself.
Let the words flow by giving yourself permission
Allow yourself to write quickly because it is your “writing time.”
Don’t think much about it. Just feel things lining up and just go with the flow.
I know this sounds pretty amorphous and vague. Still, you’d be surprised as to how effective going with your internal flow could be when it comes to boosting your overall word count.
Your writing speed improves naturally because of this improved flow. Your writing skills also benefit because you are less inhibited.
You just learn what you need to learn at the moment, which helps you pick up on one healthy writing habit after another.
You don’t feel that you have to write in circles or stop writing mid-sentence because you miss something early on. You don’t feel that your output has to be the absolute best.
This is the essence of fast writing: You’re able to achieve such a high productivity rate because you allow yourself emotionally to be within that state of flow.
You’re not engaged in analysis paralysis. You’re not contradicting yourself, nor are you laying any productivity traps that tend to slow down and stymie the average writer.
If you go out there in the writing community, you will come across many people who cannot seem to silence their inner critic. It’s as if they have this voice that tells them to produce the very “best” work, or otherwise part of their inner selves will throw a tantrum.
This is quite common among professional writers, and it’s no surprise that a lot of them feel they’re just struggling with slow handwriting speeds or substandard typing speeds because the inner fire or creative fuel simply isn’t there.
Almost all of this is self-inflicted. They suffer from typing only a low number of words because they have not given themselves permission to enter that elevated state of flow.
That’s simply too bad.
Go on several Writing Sprints in a single writing session
A writing sprint is a simple exercise of just writing everything and anything that comes to mind.
It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to meet your normal quality standards.
Instead, you just focus on the process of quick writing. Your objective is to save time and not much else.
You’re not trying to be the next great all-American novelist. You’re not trying to produce your best stuff.
Your objective is simply to pay attention to whether you can write at a very high rate of speed.
Again, you can write based on what you’re feeling. You can write based on what’s going through your mind. You can even write based on the blood flow that you are feeling in your system.
What’s important is that you have a clear idea of where your writing is going
Again, you should not obsess about lining up one perfect word after another or whether you have become a much faster writer.
Your focus should be on just the idea of typing faster. Your handwriting speed or typing speed should be the center of your focus.
This enables you to get much stuff out while at the same time picking out the right internal mental process, so your fixed time for writing becomes more productive.
This also goes a long way in eliminating distractions, especially internal ones.
Remember, what holds you back from producing writing at an exceptional level in terms of output is mostly internal.
Maybe you feel you didn’t get enough sleep last night. Or you are so skeptical about your ability to produce a lot of work quickly that you constantly wish yourself good luck.
Maybe you are capable of producing one great post after another, but your fingers simply cannot keep up.
But understand that this is just an emotional state. Some writers even say that they have the sensation that they’re falling asleep as they write.
It doesn’t have to be a distracting process. You just have to stick to your dedicated time and focus on moving forward.
Just type at a higher rate so you can match the flow of ideas going through your mind. Focus on the blood flow through your brain.
This is the key to a great post, an amazing piece of content, and just well-written work.
Because if you’re having a tough time getting stuff out, forget about good writing.
Seriously!
If you are writing at the same rate as frozen molasses flowing downhill, no matter how talented you are and no matter what you do, the English language feels like a trap.
It seems that you’re just stopping midsentence, and panic fills your whole being. You may have all these bullet points in your head, but they seem to get frozen midsentence because you just don’t have the internal speed.
It’s as if this straightjacket of perfectionism, fear, and overanalysis is just squeezing all the creative juices out of you. You can barely make it to the next sentence.
One of the most powerful ways you can eliminate distractions is to just focus on letting stuff out.
And when you look at the stopwatch in front of you, you can use it as a mental prop to just blow through all the internal limits you have placed on yourself, so you can use this particular time to produce work.
Edit Sober
While you should “write drunk” to silence your inner critic and just get stuff out there, you should edit sober.
Put simply: You have to be extra critical about everything you’ve written
For every ten things, you lay down on paper or a word processing document, be ready to cut out 80% or more.
Now, many seasoned writers would say that this is unproductive behavior because, in their minds, the whole point is to produce a lot of output.
Well, when you’re just starting to learn how to write faster, you have to cut back a lot during the editing process.
But that’s ok. The idea is just to get stuff, and your word count should reflect this purpose.
When you start writing, your main focus should be just to write as fast as you can. Writing sprints help quite a bit.
The more writing sprints you go through, the more you can write at increasingly higher levels of quality.
You should first write faster before you even think about writing better
The output must be there first so that when you edit sober, and you just keep revising your texts.
Eventually, you figure out your weak areas as you’re going through writing sprints.
This is one of the most pervasive writing problems you will face as you try to write faster.
The speed has to come first, but eventually, as you try to follow high-quality writing tips as you write, everything will start to fall into place.
And before you know it, much of your output will be high-quality stuff.
Try Dictation Software or Manual Transcription
My favorite solution to figuring out how to write so fast is to speak your content.
That’s right! Get in front of a microphone and go through your outline several times.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself that these writing sessions are going to be unnecessarily long because the typical outline is very deep and extensive.
Well, for dictation techniques, you don’t have to start with a long, drawn-out, and convoluted outline.
In fact, you can just look at a list of keywords or a list of sentences that may have very little connection with each other, thematically speaking.
The idea is to look at these words on a sheet of paper or a notepad document and draw logical connections between them.
You’re not slowly plodding one point after another. It’s not like you’re laboring through one logic sequence and making sense out of it before you tackle the next point.
That’s how normal outlines work.
When you’re looking at seemingly disjointed or just mashed-up sentences together, you are forced to enter a mental state that facilitates quick writing.
How?
You’re forcing yourself to make logical connections quickly
This pushes you to emphasize writing quickly to capture as much of these logical connections as possible before you forget them.
If you notice when analyzing quality writing, in most cases, they are uneven. Some areas are well developed, but the rest are basically just support or even fluff, to put it bluntly.
The key is to focus on the most important parts and just start voice writing. This is the essence of mastering the art of writing faster.
You have to make a choice instead of getting so caught up by the seemingly “perfect” organization of the outline or preexisting text you are working with.
When you do that, you run the very real risk of just hitting a wall.
It is one of the most common writing challenges. Fast writing enables you to whip out that first draft sooner rather than later.
It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to contain all the information that the best article is supposed to have.
Just focus on the process of getting stuff in your head out
And paying attention to the fact that you’re able to write faster in a certain context, you lay the foundations for the ability to cut down the time you write while at the same time increasing your output quality later on.
This is one of the first hard lessons anybody looking to become a faster writer needs to learn.
And unfortunately, a lot of it is emotional because you only have so much dedicated time in any given day to write. It seems that when you write every other word, it’s as if you are hitting one wall after another.
When you learn to trust yourself by using dictation software or using audio-to-text processes, the English language suddenly becomes much smoother because you feel that you have a net that will catch you as long as you just talk into the mic.
Eventually, things will fall into place, and you will find the appropriate word — one that sums up the thoughts that are just flashing through your mind at an excessively dizzying speed.
Understand Your Writing Challenges When Writing Fast
Writing fast is such a challenge because you’re not dealing with external problems.
Nobody is telling you that you can’t use talk-to-text software. There’s nobody putting pressure on you to take some sort of free course so you can achieve a higher writing speed.
Instead, writing quickly just really boils down to an emotional state.
While taking quizzes and whatnot that boosts your speaking speed can help tremendously, you still have to produce high-quality materials at the end of the day.
And the best way to do that while learning how to save time simultaneously is to simply verbalize your train of thought.
That’s really too bad. But becoming a faster writer means that you have to go through a process where you allow yourself to be a sloppy talker.
This is where it feels like you’re just talking in circles, or you’re just spouting out gibberish.
At some point, as you try to pick out the perfect word, you end up spouting what seems like nonsense.
So many writers are so afraid of this. Just as the same way they’re fearful of their spell checker, throwing off a specific section in their article that they thought would be brilliant.
They just have a tough time getting to the succeeding sentence because of the internal pressure that they put on themselves.
There’s a huge difference between assuming that there are no limits when you’re talking and allowing your internal critic to just take over.
And unfortunately, this difference is not as black-and-white as you think.
Sure, you feel that you’re making progress.
But if you are not careful and fail to be your own accountability buddy, pretty soon, what would seem like clearly laid out points become walls.
Getting to the next sentence feels almost impossible. You end up struggling with fewer and fewer words.
You just whip out your microphone and go on to Google Docs and just talk.
Allow yourself to talk excitedly
The problem with Google Docs is that it seems that you want to modulate everything, including your speaking speed.
You do that because you want to make sure that it’s picking up all the words.
This is also part of its training process because the sophisticated machine-learning software that forms its backbone learns from your specific dictation.
It’s ok not so much getting all the words right. Instead, the secret to any well-developed talk-to-text software is to speak quickly.
Just talk as fast as you can, and let the software catch up
Sure, you may be thinking that this form of writing is redundant and possibly even wasteful because you have to edit a lot of the materials, or any of your audios simply aren’t picked up by Google Docs because of how fast you tend to talk.
But eventually, you will find the right pace, and Google will catch up to you. It is a two-way street.
This would put immense pressure on you if you thought your typing speed was lousy.
If you put yourself in that type of situation, you will never become a faster writer.
Instead of writing at a very high volume, you just maximize the amount of mental stress you put on yourself.
I’m sure that’s not the kind of writing “improvement” you’re after.
To write quickly is, above all else, to overcome emotional writing
This is when you are basically writing out of fear, and you’re intimidating yourself.
You’re not a good accountability buddy when you do that.
So the key here is to just talk freely and finish the mental outline you have as you talk to Google Docs.
You have to repeat this several times until you both train each other.
Eventually, you will hit your stride. Whatever it is that you verbally write will come out awesome the first time around.
When you first try to write this way, your first draft is gonna suck.
Be ready for that. Expect that.
Don’t have all these unrealistic expectations of yourself
What’s important is that you are focused on just trying to write faster.
Eventually, your writing skills will make a way to ensure a high level of quality even though you are using dictation blogging or dictaphone writing to maximize your output.
One of the biggest challenges for this method of writing sessions is to know when to stop.
Since you can easily keep talking, this is especially challenging when you equate writing fast with talking at a high rate of speed.
They don’t automatically go hand-in-hand.
If you are talking really quickly, but the output is either repetitious or doesn’t quite fit the flow of what you talked about earlier, you’re gonna have to edit that out.
So adopt the healthy writing habit of talking quickly but make sure that everything fits.
Again, you will only nail this once you get in the habit of repeated high-volume and quick writing dictations.
The Final word on how to write really fast? Write every day
Whether you’re dictating your content or typing it out manually, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
And pretty soon, you hit your stride, and you’re able to connect the dots, and writing 20,000 words or more per day no longer feels some sort of distant fantasy.
I’ve been dictation blogging for over 9 years now and it’s truly changed my life. I teach fellow bloggers the ins and outs of voice blogging so they can take their productivity to a whole new level.
