3 Techniques to Skyrocket Your Writing Speed

Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of writing you need to do?

I have written online for more than 8 months at this point. And I have often spent more time postponing my writing session than I have spent writing. That is a huge waste of time, and I have learned a few techniques, so I can sit down and finish my writing quickly.

Before we dive deeper into the 3 techniques that will skyrocket your writing speed, let’s take a look at some of the mistakes that beginner writers often run into.

These mistakes are slowing you down from getting your writing done.

Starting with the biggest mistake:

Beginning writers don’t don’t make time for ideation

One of the mistakes that held me back a lot when I first started writing on the internet was that I didn’t make time for ideation.

Meaning that every time I sat down to write, I would have to find an idea before I could start. This would result in huge time losses. And I would second guess every idea not thinking it was good enough.

Here are 5 other mistakes beginner writers make that slow down their writing speed:

1. Overthinking

2. Perfectionism

3. Procrastination

4. Being distracted

5. Editing while writing

But, don’t worry.

With the techniques I’m about to show you, you can quickly combat all of these.

1. Change your mindset from length to time.

I have always set myself writing goals along the lines of: I have to sit down and write 800 words on [Topic] before I'm done.

The problem with this approach is that there's no specified time for you to be done writing. Instead, it's much less overwhelming when I shift my focus from a specific amount of words to a specific amount of time. Then my writing goal turns to: I have to sit down for 30 minutes and write [SpecificAssignment] before I'm done.

Time is much more manageable than results.

2. Break your writing into smaller chunks.

You might have noticed in the first point that I changed the thing I was writing about from [Topic] to [SpecificAssignment].

That's intentional. You need a clear, specific goal when you sit down to write, and the goal needs to be broken into as big a chunk so it's still a challenge, but yet small enough that you will do it. If you're still overwhelmed by the task, you need to break it down again.

Specificity keeps your mind from wandering and keeps uncertainty at the door.

3. Prep the page with an outline.

Once you have committed to sit down and write, you want the writing session to be productive and not another hair-pulling event.

So, I always like to start from an outline. Begin with a headline for your piece, and unfold that headline into the subheads that illustrate your main point. I trick my brain into thinking it's not real writing when I'm doing it, and then, when there are words on the page, there's no blank page staring back at you.

Always start by building the skeleton of the piece you're writing.

This also adds specificity.

Talk to you more next Monday.

Peter