Faster Writing Techniques — 5 Quick Methods For Success
Schedule magic has cast its spell and potion to allow you time to write. Ass is in the seat, it’s time to rock and roll. Visions of composing a masterpiece story have been on your mind all day. The idea is in place and you’re ready to write.
A willing empty doc is patiently waiting for your input and you begin but the keyboard is suddenly frozen. Typing letters is like moving your fingers through quick drying cement.
You’ve been sitting in front of your screen for forever but the letters are few and the beautiful planned article you imagined hasn’t taken form.
What to do?
1) Introduce New Environment
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Stand up. Scream! Shake your arms and wiggle around. Dance. Blast a favorite song and do a silly dance. Do a set of free-standing squats. Chant “Om” for 3 minutes straight.
Clear your mind off writing for a flash.
Now you’ve hit the personal reset button. You’ve turned off the circuitry and rebooted. It’s time to get back to writing.
Take the step a bit further.
Run a site in the background playing classical music or ambient peaceful sounds to center your concentration. I prefer Franz Liszt or Mozart to get my mental juices flowing but you may like Van Halen.
Dim the lights, only use sunlight pouring through a window, write in eerie blackness, or put on a lava lamp to focus. It’s your choice, be creative.
If you dare get bare. Write in the nude. Or, wear a favorite hat.
The point is to use inspiring props or stimuli fitting your personal style.
2) Quit Scheduling Unreasonable Expectations
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What are you demanding of yourself?
I’m guilty of pushing myself to produce stories and articles in order to meet my own imagined quota to do better with MPP or best my last number of views, reads, and claps.
Reality is the pressure is all my creation. I’m constantly putting myself in the pressure cooker and the results can be disheartening. The quality of my writing may suffer. My ideas may lack coherence.
Time to put the brakes on and get back to writing because I want to not beat myself up over and over.
When I get caught up in a feeling of needing to produce just to produce I take the time to change my writing agenda and subject of creation.
Find the spirit of your muse by switching your style. Write a poem or a song. Compose a piece on a subject you are unfamiliar with requiring research and discovery. Invent a screenplay and direct it in the mind feature only you can see.
Often I go back to an older story and revise, edit, replace illustrations, and add content to rejuvenate my writing soul. I may even retitle the redone story and post it again.
Resist the temptation to put yourself in bondage over believing you must accomplish more and more in order to have value or be a successful writer.
Your urgency is yours only, you make it up, and you decide how to act on it.
Get your focus on finding your ingenuity and talent through calm enjoyable writing consistency.
3) Write Like A Possessed Unskilled Maniac
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Kick your perfectionist, insecure writing identity in the ass. Many minutes can be wasted scrutinizing each sentence and word when you're composing the initial draft of your story.
Stop the preemptive edit technique.
Attack your writing after the story is completed. Get those ideas and words flowing like slick grease and leave the fine-tuning for later. As a consequence, you’ll find the more writing practice you have the less you’ll need to correct.
Ignore the red underscores indicating errors or turn off the automated writing assistant for your first draft. Stopping to correct each possible error interrupts your flow of writing consciousness. Attend to errors after your done writing.
Writing will become like breathing, natural and easy. Self-assurance will build the less revising you do while writing. Your words will come quicker and quality will grow organically into your first copies.
4) Challenge Yourself
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Once you’ve decided to produce on your own schedule take chances with knocking out a faster write than ever before. I’ll be cooking dinner and running in between stirring the ground beef and boiling pasta to write a few quick sentences in a story.
How quick can I get this article finished? I’ll be counting down the moments before needing to pick the kids up from school and rushing to finish the last sentences of a paragraph.
Only a half hour until the series my wife and I habitually watch comes on the network. Its 30 minutes of possible condensed creativity story making time!
Make a game of it. Have a little fun for the sake of pushing yourself.
5) Be Obsessed and Fanatic
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Writing consumes my entire being and the muse possesses me like an otherworldly spirit. Slipping into a trance of inspiration I compose and cannot be disturbed.
Be in that state of mind. Beyond distraction. In a dimension of the writing pouring out of your mind.
You won’t need to try to strain at the concepts you wish to express. Center on and lose yourself in the present moment of your artistry. Blocking out the world is challenging but possible with practice and your tricks.
The early morning quiet times. The late-late night silent escapes. The mid-day nobody-is-at-home peace pauses. Using favorite meditative music to zone to and fade out the cacophony of all disturbances.
Find your method and write with unprecedented speed.
Generate A Greater Abundance of Writing Now
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Mix up techniques or use them all. Forget competing with other writer’s production and reach for new heights. Use a growth mindset focussed on dedication and hardwork with a love for learning and filled with resilience.
Write every day and hone your talent into line after line of high caliber value. You will write with ease and speed the more you make and create.
Be prepared to crank out more stories and articles than ever before. Gear-up and rev your writing engines to speed into new dimensions.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +438,678 people.
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