How to Write Faster 10 Effective Strategies Finally Finish Your Book

How to Write Faster 10 Effective Strategies Finally Finish Your Book How to Write Faster: 10 Effective Strategies Finally Finish Your Book Learning how to write faster has many uses, whether youre writing a book or just want to get ahead in another writing field.â€Å"The faster I write, the better my output. If I’m going slow, I’m in trouble. It means I’m pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.†Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Raymond ChandlerWe’ve all been there: You finally squeeze in some writing time in between all your commitments but rarely have a solid writing habit built into your busy life.However, when you sit down to write, something odd happens. These are our strategies for how to write faster:Write every dayUse an outline to write fasterAvoid editing as you goResearch laterPractice your typing speedSit up properly to write fasterUse talk-to-textDo writing sprintsGet accountability buddiesChallenge yourselfYou thought that a torrent of words would flow out - after all, you haveso much to say.Yet, each word that comes out of you is dragged out. Writing feels less like fun, and more like bleeding.At the end of the hour, you find youve only written 100 words, and not the 500 words you budgeted.Any writer understands how frustrating it is to make time for writing, but to have almost nothing to show for that time. How to Write Well FastTheres a great debate over whether or not doing something quickly produces good quality. After all, fast food restaurants and known for their low-quality food being unhealthy.However, writing is not like the food industry.In fact, we have plenty of tips for maintaining that quality while learning how to write faster.So can you write well while doing so quickly?The answer is yes, and heres howHow to Write a FasterI have some good news: This doesnt have to be the case.You can set up your writing process in such a way that its guaranteed youll find your writing flow and have words stream out of you faster than you can catch them.You can make sure that your writing session is as efficient and effective as possible so that not a single minute is wasted.Writing faster will not only mean that you finish your book’s first draft, which can be a life-changing achievement, it’ll also mean that you’ll be quicker at anything you write.Your blog posts, emails, letters, and even your social media updates will be written faster.Here are all the practical tips Ive gathered over the years to help me and my students learn how to write a book in less than 30 days.NOTE: We cover everything in this blog post and much more about the writing, marketing, and publishing process in our VIP Self-Publishing Program. Learn more about it here#1 Write Every DayI’m going to start with an essential tip: If you want to write faster, you have to write every day and make that your primary writing goal.Writing, like any craft, gets better the more you do it. The more you practice your writing skills, the faster the words will come to your mind and your fingertips.You’ll get better and quicker at connecting diff erent pieces of knowledge, forming new ideas and improving your natural storytelling abilities.You’ll also get quicker at the mechanical process of writing. Youll develop muscle memory for your keyboard and your writing speed will go up. Soon you’ll wonder how you could have ever survived at your slower words-per-minute speed.What to write? You could update your WordPress blog every day, or a chapter of your book every day. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re writing. How to Write Faster Action Step:1 Choose what you’re going to write about every day, whether it’s blog articles, chapters of your book or even a personal journal.2 Set your word count goal for each day.3 Track how many words you are writing per hour or day.However, even writing every day won’t stop you facing that feeling you get when you see a blank page. To avoid that and guarantee your words flow every time you see a new page you need to create an outline.#2 Crea te an OutlineHere’s the writing world’s worst-kept secret: outlines work to help you write faster!To achieve any goal, you need to plan first. The same can be said for writing.Even if you’re able to crank out 3000 words an hour, it won’t matter much if your content lacks direction, as readers will get confused and drop your book.A solid outline gives you the direction you need to keep your readers engaged and it also allows you to plan roughly how many words are in your novel, working backward from how many chapters and how many words in each chapter.This ensures you can plan and create your writing goal to succeed. Writing a book is a lot of work, but we can cut out a ton of obstacles with a well-written book outlinethat builds passion and purpose into your writing.Here’s how an outline can double or even triple your writing speed:1. Outlines Eliminate Writer’s BlockOne of the reasons writers experience  writer’s block is by not ha ving an outline, or having a poorly written outline. If your outline is well-organized and fleshed out with all the ideas, chapters, and sections flowing in a logical sequence, chances are writer’s block won’t be an issue.When you have to stop to think about what comes next, you’re no longer in writing mode. Instead, you fall into confusion and frustration and then default to book research mode.â€Å"I know I can get through this if I just it look up†¦Ã¢â‚¬ You start doing everything else but writing. The next time you hit a wall,check the flow of your outline. Revise what you need to and keep moving forward. Be sure to do as much research as you can before the initial writing begins.2. Outlines Provide an Organized Framework for Your Book’s StructureYour outline is the roadmap for your book, a place where your story structure is laid out in front of you. Without it, your writing time is slow and grueling, like running up a mountain with a ball and chain. Sounds tough, right?A well-organized outline boosts productivity throughout the writing phase.The secret to completing any big project, like a novel, is to break it into small manageable chunks, and an outline breaks this marathon project into small manageable writing tasks.You’ll write much faster when the chapters flow from one to the next and ideas are combined and clustered. When your outline flows with a well-organized structure you don’t have to stop to think about what to write next. Your fingers can keep moving in flow with the plan you created.3. Outlines Give You a Bird’s Eye ViewWhen you can see your book in its entirety on the page, you feel compelled to write as much as possible. Think of it as a race. You’ll perform much better knowing the exact distance you have to run - especially as you near the finish line and you have the  end in sight.Behind every great post and book is a bulletproof outline. Here are some steps you can take today to get started with this process. How to Write Faster Action Step:1 Spend some time today and go back and revise your book outline. If you don’t have one, make one.2 Look at areas that could be better researched. Review the chapters that have ideas that require deeper development.3 The aim is to make your outline the best it can be. Revise your outline as you go, but make sure your words keep hitting the paper.For other writing:Commit to this rule whenever you’re writing anything: Five minutes of outlining for every 500 words of content. Writing a 1,000-word article? Spend 10 minutes developing an outline.Writing a 100-word email? Spend a minute outlining your points. Every minute you spend outlining will save you a heap of time later.#3 Dont edit as you goWant to write better quality stuff? Then youre going to have let go of your inner perfectionist and stop your self-editing.Hemingway is often attributed with the quote, write drunk, edit sober. While Im no t advocating you become an alcoholic to produce content, you can adopt the figurative meaning of the quote.The largest obstacle to entering that zen state where the words zip out of us effortlessly is our tendency to censor ourselves. We continuously correct what were about to say before we put the words on the page.Us writers tend to be perfectionists, yet this self-criticism gets in the way of our creativity.A better strategy is to write a rough draft first. Think B- quality instead of A+. This is what Hemingway means when he says to write drunk. During the drafting phase you let go of caring about thequalityof your work, but instead focus on thequantity.Aim to finish your daily writing goal, no matter how bad the draft is. The goal is not to have a perfect manuscript.Once youve finished, then and only then, begin the â€Å"edit sober† phase. Here you can engage your inner critic. You can cut what doesnt work and polish what does. Its best to begin the editing phase with a fresh set of eyes, usually after youve taken a break.If its a short article, then sleep on your draft before editing.If its a book draft, then take at least a week off the project before looking back on it.Its hard to let go of that inner judge when drafting our work, but once you do, youll write significantly faster. Often when you look back on the draft that you thought was horrible, youll find its better than you thought. Not perfect, but better than you imagined.Youll also see that there were some ideas you put in there that couldnt have happened if you were writing as a perfectionist.Also, if youre still worried about the quality of your book draft, remember that youll hire an editor to polish your book to be the best it can be. How to Write Faster Action Step:1 When you begin writing a piece, throw perfection out of the window and aim for a rough draft. Think B- work and not A+.2 If you find it hard to lock up your inner perfectionist, set yourself a challenge to write a wor d count in a set time, like 500 words in 30-minute chunks.3 After you finish your draft, put it away for a bit of time before you begin editing.#4 Write Faster First, Research LaterHeres a piece of great advice many journalists receive: write first and research your book later. It might be counter-intuitive, but before you close this page and think I’m crazy, hear me out.When you begin writing you have one mission: enter flow. This is the state where the words come out of you effortlessly and you lose awareness of time flowing by. This is the key for quality and effective writing.Once you enter flow, your mission is to stay there.A sure way to get thrown out of the zone is to stop mid-sentence to find the capital of that countryyou want to reference, and then get sucked down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.Instead of interrupting your flow of writing, use a writer’s tip I’ve talked about before: TK your research point.TK is short for â€Å"to come† and is a han dy placeholder to use for research points you want to look up later. There are barely any words in the English language that have those two letters next to each other, making it easy to use the Command+F function to find these placeholders.For example, lets say you were writing about the Golden Gate bridge and couldnt remember the date it opened and its length. If that were the case, this is what your draft would look like and doing a quick command+f (for mac) will help you fill in these gaps later:The Golden Gate Bridge was opened in TK and was the longest bridge with a main span of TK.This takes 10 seconds to write, and you can stay in your flow and move on to the next sentence.If you had Googled each of those facts, the sentence would have taken you 60 seconds and taken you out of your flow.After you finish the draft, you can go back in and fill in the blanks:The Golden Gate Bridge was opened in1937and was the longest bridge with a main span of4,200 feet. How to Write Faster Acti on Step:1 When drafting, if you cant remember a piece of detail, put TK as a placeholder, instead of going to Google.2 During your editing phase, use Control+F to search for TK and replace each result with the relevant piece of research.#5 Schedule Brief Typing Practice SessionsThink of your typing speed as the bottleneck between your brain and your piece of content, like the narrowest part of the road that’s causing a traffic buildup. Your fingers simply can’t type as fast as your mind is working.Unfortunately, technology hasn’t yet progressed to the point where we can think of the words and they magically appear on the page, but with the help of a few fun and simple online games we can improve our typing speed.I’ll share a secret with you: I used to not be able to type very well. I was like someone from the early 20th century, using two fingers to pound out my content. My typing speed was barely above 30 words per minute. Yet, writing was important t o me, like it is for you, so I worked at it.Even now, for ten minutes a day I play online typing games to test my writing speed and provide feedback on how efficient I am a typist. It’s a great way to master the skill of getting your word count up. Check out 10FastFingersor Key Hero.# 6 Use Proper Sitting PostureThe position of your body has a lot to do with typing speed and efficiency.If you slouch in your chair you’ll cramp up and find it hard to concentrate.Here is how you should position yourself:Make sure that you are sitting up straight - don’t lean or hunch over towards the desk.Position your elbows at right angles to the keyboard - avoid bending your arms upwards or downwards.Properlyposition your fingerson the keyboard.You can even buy a standing desk to help your posture.It’s scientifically proven that thestanding deskhas major benefits for your health. Standing gives you higher energy levels and better blood flow. But that’s not all! It also boosts productivity and makes us more efficient when typing.#7 Use talk-to-textOne of the greatest parts about the advancement in technology is the fact that there are now options to use talk-to-text to even write a book, and not just compose a text message.Google docs has a fantastic diction program that allows you to speak your words onto the page.Heres how you can use diction on Google docs:Open a new doc in Google DocsGo to ToolsSelect voice typingMake sure your microphone is workingPush the microphone that pops up on the left side of your doc and start speakingThats all there is to it. This way, those of you who can speak faster than you type and are audible people in general (usually you extroverts!), you can write a book faster with this method.#8 Do writing sprints to write fasterWriting sprints are one of the best ways to write faster.Theres an entire community of writers (typically found on Twitter using the #WritingSprint hashtag) who write their entire books by using sprints.A writing sprint is when you set a certain amount of time on the clock (15 minutes for the first, then 25, then 10 minutes) and you write as fast as you can for that amount of time.The goal with writing sprints is to NOT edit, not go back and read, just write.Heres an example of the writing community on Twitter doing their sprints:#9 Get an accountability buddyOne of the best ways to write and finish a book faster is utilizing accountability partners in order to keep you on track.Here at Self-Publishing School, we help students find accountability partners in our Mastermind Community on Facebook. This is largely responsible for students finishing their drafts faster.These are some benefits and reasons having an accountability partner can help you write faster:Someone else can keep you accountableThey can help lift your spirits if youre feeling down (which usually prevents writing)They can talk through writers block with you to get rid of itYou can do writing sprints togetherUltimately, youll only benefit from having a writing buddy on-hand to keep you on pace to finish your book faster.#10 Challenge YourselfWriting faster will not only allow you to finish your books first draft faster, it’ll make you quicker at all forms of writing. You’ll be speedier at composing emails, recommendation letters, cover letters, social media posts and articles.Writing is also closely related to thinking. Being a faster and clearer writer will make you a faster and clearer thinker.Follow the above tips on your next greatarticle idea or book chapter and see how many words you can get out in a timed writing session. Youll be amazed at the difference in your writing speed.Instead of your draft taking months to produce, you might find that youll be able to pound out full-length novels on the weekends.What to do NextIn order to write faster, it helps to be fully informed. That way, youll spend less time clicking open another tab and more time writing.Her es how you can do that.