Five Ways To Speed Up Your Writing

One of the major tools every writer needs is the ability to write fast. If you struggle with each word, revising everything again and again, your productivity will suffer. You have to be able to write fast, but at the same time you have to write well. This means that everything you write has to be clear, concise, easy to read and interesting, and it has to be done with speed. Five things that help are:
• Being well organized
• Doing sufficient research
• Not skimping on the outline
• “Talking” on paper. Getting the words to “flow”
• Not striving for perfection, but trying for a decent first draft.
The first thing you need for fast writing is organization, and this applies to everything you do, including research, outlining, writing and revision. If you don’t have a plan (or know where you’re going), you’re in trouble. So plan ahead.
Second, you should make sure you do sufficient research. People sometimes think that skimping on research will speed things up, but in the long-run, it won’t; in fact, it will likely slow things down considerably. It’s important, however, to develop a research strategy for getting the facts you need quickly. One of the best places for this is the internet, but books and magazines (and in some cases, interviews) are also important.
Five by seven cards are particularly useful for jotting down information. Copy the key points and ideas onto these cards; the act of writing them down helps you remember them. When you’ve gathering the information you need, spend some time looking it over. Think about it. Organize it in your mind as you plan your outline. This helps you remember it even better — it plants it deeper in your mind. In addition, it triggers your subconscious mind. This is the part of your mind that takes over when you’re doing other things. Even though you don’t realize it, your subconscious mind is assimilating, digesting and organizing the material you have gathered.
Also, remember that outlining is not a single step; it’s actually several steps. What you want is to “grow” an outline. To do this, start with a general and relatively brief outline (consisting of little more that an organized list of the things you want to talk about), and make sure you leave considerable space around each of the topics.
When you have finished this outline, start filling in the spaces you have left. Add more material, more facts, more anecdotes and so on. Then quickly write a second, more complete, outline; you may, in fact, want to take this a step further to a third outline. This may seem like a lot of extra work, but in reality, the more detailed your outline, the easier it will be to write your article (or chapter of a book), and the better organized it will be.
When you are finally satisfied with your outline, you’re ready to write. And for many people, this is where the problems begin. But there is a good way to ease yourself into it: pretend a friend is sitting across from you. Tell him what you want to say, then put it down on paper.
What you want at this stage is for the words to “flow.” The groundwork that you did earlier should have prepared you for this. If you did it properly, it should have “primed” you. The reason for this groundwork was to build up “pressure” (creative pressure), so that by the time you were ready to write, you are at a “bursting point.” Then, let it go … let it come out. Just start writing. Don’t worry about anything; keep going, using your outline as a guide. At this point you don’t want to strive for perfection (in fact, it’s unlikely you’ll even come close); the important thing is to keep going until you have finished a first draft. Don’t be sloppy, though; try for a reasonable draft so you won’t have to do a lot of revising.