Writing Faster is not About Concentration or Hard Work

This article is not about cool prompts for ChatGPT, secret productivity hacks or replacing your fingers with robotic pistons. I’m assuming that you want to create unique writing which shows your personality (crazy, right?).

My clients are mostly writers with English as a second language and one of the common things they want to improve is how long it takes them to complete a draft.

Writing faster is not a pipe dream. By achieving it you can use spare time to work on other tasks, write more, or spend more time editing. All three of these are profitable endeavours. They'll demonstrate your value and allow you to reap more rewards.

But writing faster is not what you think. It's not about working harder; it's about working more efficiently.

The following methods for improving your writing speed do just that.

8 ways to write faster

1. Break up the writing process

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you think of producing a piece of writing as one task. Approach the planning, drafting, and editing separately. With a solid plan and no need to review the work immediately, you’ll be surprised how quickly you can smash the first draft.

2. Meticulous planning (with no aimless research)

Writing fast depends on knowing what you are trying to produce. Follow a guide and you won’t be stopping to think all the time. If you get the plan right, you will save hours of time in rewrites, edits, and additions. Don’t get distracted by browsing site after site to research. Focus only on the sources you need to complete your first draft. You can add the fine details later.

3. Make use of templates

It’s not cheating. People use templates for many high-volume tasks in life. Emails, reports, social media posts — you can build relevant templates and customise them. What matters is the end product. Save time in formatting and typing out phrases you can reuse. Anything you’ll write more than once should be a candidate for having a template.

4. Prep by getting into English mode

If English is not your first language, get warmed up before writing. Read similar work to what you’ll produce, listen to a podcast or watch a video in English to get tune your ear to the vocab and cadence of the language.

5. Train your typing speed

Again, if English is not your first language, your typing may be slower than in L1. Play?typing games?to?hard-wire English phonics?and letter patterns into your brain. OR, simply copy out text to improve your typing speed.

6. Achieve balance?

If you try to write for 6 hours straight, you won’t be very productive towards the end of the session. Effective writing sessions must be nurtured through a balanced approach. Remember to take breaks. Movement and walking are especially helpful.

7. Use ‘the carrot and the stick’

Are you motivated by rewards (e.g. a coffee from your favourite cafe) or sanctions (e.g. 50 sit-ups)? Either way, ensure that you set a deadline for your writing and hold yourself accountable. This will help you keep pace with your word-count goals.

8. Use prompts

If you get stuck, use prompts to get you back in the zone. Play a word game, change your soundscape, look at a mood board or word cloud, or write something easy (e.g. 250 words of journaling).

Summing Up

Writing faster matters. We’re all judged on productivity (as well as quality). There’s no light-speed fix or magic formula to writing faster. Your progress depends on your ability to understand your own traits as a writer and your ability to get into the flow state.

Whichever tips you choose to follow (or not), remember to be kind to yourself as a writer. Improved productivity will benefit you, but putting too much pressure on your speed may lead to burnout.

Write smarter, not harder.

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Are you building something great?

Nowadays, more people are choosing to use the skills they've learned at work to build their own life. The world is full of consultants, freelancers, and entrepreneurs (and that's a good thing). Heck, I'm one of you.

And we've got something else in common. We all need to tell others about what we can offer.

Writing to attract clients and sell your services at a higher rate is arguably the most important skill to develop in 2023.

In the last two years, I've helped a wide variety of writers reach their personal and professional goals. Now, I'm narrowing my focus because I know I can deliver ultra-impressive results for a particular group: freelance writers.

If you have started a business (freelance copywriting, content creation, or ghostwriting for clients) you need to communicate the following:

• Why clients need YOUR service
• Why YOU are great to work with
• What results YOU can offer

I've spent countless hours learning what works, and I've learned lots of hard lessons so you don't have to.

It's important for me to show my coaching gets you tangible results - increased efficiency, more clients, engagement and praise, better pay, bigger audiences, and less frustration.

That's why I'm choosing to focus on freelance copywriters and founders who need these results, rather than writers with other goals. And I'll continue to help multilingual writers. If you write in English but it's not your first language, then I'm rooting for you.

And if you don't have your own business, that's fine. You'll still be able to follow my free tips and content all over the web.

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Writers together strong

There are only 168 hours in a week, and I like to spend some of them writing, sleeping, and occasionally doing other cool stuff.

So, I'm finally launching the hybrid group course I've been working on for two years. If you've ever thought about working together with a coach, or taking a writing course, this could be the right approach for you to get the following:

• The support of a powerful international writing community
• The ability to study on your own AND with a mentor
• Personal feedback on your work
• Workshops and Q&As with me

I've spent a long time putting this course together so that larger numbers of writers can still benefit from my personalised approach. It's more economical than working 1:1, and with the help of so many pro writers, it means you'll get even better value.

There are a couple of spots left in my test group, so if you want a 50% discount, act fast.

Details here.

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If you find my monthly newsletter useful, why not join the 1,500+ multilingual writers on my mailing list? No spam. No bullshirt. I'll just send you one cool writing tip per week (and you'll get me 30-page eBook?How to Become a Proficient English Writer?completely free).?Join here.

Thanks for reading this newsletter. I'll see you next month.

Keep writing. Keep improving.

Phil