The Art of Efficient Writing: Learn How I Craft 2000 Words in 60 Minutes!

Unveiling My Speedwriting Techniques

As a professional writer, it’s literally my job to put words on paper, er, computer screen, rapidly. While high quality is important, there are ways to write faster and not lose out on that quality.

Want to speedwrite? Here’s how I hit 2,000 words or more in an hour:

Practice Makes Perfect

Just like anything else, the more you write, the better you’ll get. Your quality will improve and you’ll start to write faster. Add in deadlines and you get to really speed things up! There’s nothing like knowing you have to turn in an article in 30 minutes to get your fingers flying over the keyboard.

I spent a year tracking how many words I wrote each day and kept track of the amount of time I spent actually writing. The results were crazy! There were actually days that I hit 3,000 words an hour, but in general, 2,000 is my norm.

Keeping track in a spreadsheet is a good way to track your typing speed and to hit new records. Just being aware of how many words you write can help.

Get Rid of Distractions

Does this sound familiar? You sit down to write and can’t think of a title, so you sit and stare at the screen for a minute, but then a notification pops up. You click it and end up responding to someone on Instagram or Facebook. Next thing you know, you’ve been doom scrolling for 30 minutes.

Distractions are the bane of a writer’s life. To write fast, you need to eliminate them, which is easier said than done, especially if your distractions are living things. (Adios, kids, you’re too distracting!)

Some ways I reduce or eliminate distractions is:

• writing offline
• putting on white noise or background music with no words
• closing my office (bedroom) door
• clearing my desk of anything I might fidget with
• eating and drinking beforehand
• feeding and watering people, pets, etc. before I start
• using the bathroom first
• turning off notifications if I do need to be online

You’ll need to find your own ways to keep those things to a minimum, but even reducing some of your distractions can be a good way to speed up your writing.

Enter the Right Headspace

You may have heard that you should have a routine if you work at home. This is actually really important for getting your head in the right space for writing. When you’re 100% in writing mode, it’s easier to type fast.

How do you get into the writing headspace? Pick a couple of triggers, like listening to specific music when you write, drinking a certain tea or coffee, or sitting in a certain spot. Only write when you’re using these triggers and turn them off or move as soon as you start doing something else.

Over time, your brain will clue in that when you activate one of the triggers, it means it’s time to focus.

Know Your Topic

The better you know your topic, the easier it is to write fast. If you haven’t specialized in a niche yet, this is a great time to do that. When you write multiple articles or a full book on the same topic, you’ll automatically speed up.

Writing goes faster when you already have the facts in your head. For example, I once wrote a website with a good 30 blog posts on beekeeping. At first, I was kind of slow, because I knew very little about bees, but by the end of it, the articles nearly wrote themselves.

Start with a Plan

Another method to get things done so much faster is to create an outline before you start. It doesn’t need to be complicated, but having an idea of how the article will flow makes it simpler to keep writing.

There’s no stopping to consider what the next logical point should be when you have an outline. I like to simply write out my main points and then turn each one into an introductory sentence. That’s it. You have each section started and all you need to do is fill it in. This makes the article go much faster.

Tools I Use

While you can write fast with nothing special, there are a few tools that help me work more efficiently. They include:

Pomodoro Tracker: This amazing free tool lets you set productivity sessions and scheduled breaks. I usually do 25 minutes of work, with a 5-minute break in between sessions. It has a ticking sound and countdown that can really help you stay focused.

Second Monitor: Having a second monitor is really, really useful if you’re doing a lot of research. You can open up your research tabs on one monitor and write on the other. This lets me write so much faster because I’m not stopping to click back and forth.

4theWords: Need extra motivation to keep writing? What about typing to kill monsters? 4theWords is a way to gamify your writing and they have a free trial so you can try it out. However, it ends up costing something like $4 a month, so it’s definitely worth it. Racing against the clock is perfect for smashing writer’s block. You can refer people for free crystals (used to buy loot and pay for subscriptions. My referral code is: PIDEM98305

That’s pretty much it. You don’t need anything fancy to write faster. And remember that while my average is 2,000, that doesn’t mean you are going to do the same. Some writers are much faster, others are slower. It’s all good, as long as you can improve your writing.

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