How to Write Faster: 10 Crafty Ways to Hit 1,000 Words Per Hour

How to Write Faster: 10 Crafty Ways to Hit 1,000 Words Per Hour

How to Write Faster: 10 Crafty Ways to Hit 1,000 Words Per Hour

Yesssss!

The agenda gods have given you a ruin, and you’ve got a rare hour to definitely sit down and write. You could produce an entire blog put up! An article! Maybe even a brief book chapter! Your Google studies is all finished, so all you want to do now’s write.

You observe ass to seat, stir up your pc, begin typing …

… and it’s like looking a video in slo-mo.

Once the hour is up, you do a phrase rely — and permit’s just say the final tally is much less than mind-blowing.

It’s time to drag you out of that rut. Here are ten ways to provide extraordinary writing in quantity. Using these procedures, I can write a full 1,000-phrase article in under an hour; I bet they’ll increase your writing velocity as nicely.

Want to Know How to Write Faster? Try These:

Write Under Pressure (from Your Bladder)

Outwit Writer’s Block with This Old Journalist’s Trick

Use Automation to Skip Two Million Keystrokes

Turn Off the Squiggly Red Lines

Invest in a Faster Pen

Do B-Minus Work

Get Zen Before You Pick Up Your Pen

Stop Letting the Schedule Push You Around

Play Games to Boost Your Words Per Minute

Gamble with Your Reputation

1. Write Under Pressure (from Your Bladder)

When I’m on fire (or on a cut-off date) and don’t want to forestall writing, I bypass rest room breaks till I’m accomplished. Nothing speeds up your writing like understanding you’re at the verge of having a potty coincidence.

Being a forty eight-12 months-old woman, I should pee every 30 minutes, so you can guess I’m writing scorchingly fast to make it to the following rest room break; but if this isn’t the case for you, attempt quaffing a couple glasses of water earlier than sitting down at your laptop.

Caveat: I am no longer a physician and this probable isn’t the healthiest aspect to do. In truth, I’ve heard of bladder infections being referred to as “secretary’s sickness” because they used to take place often to secretaries who held it in whilst they completed “simply one more mission.” Use this tactic at your own threat!

2. Outwit Writer’s Block with This Old Journalist’s Trick

Instead of insisting that your facts and examples be all lined up before you placed pen to paper, which ends up in over-gaining knowledge of, strive writing from your head. Get down what you already know, and what you bear in mind out of your interviews — and drop inside the term “TK” anywhere you get stuck and need extra information.

TK is journo-talk for “to come back,” and it’s used as a placeholder for copy you’ll add later. The splendor of TK is that this combination of letters very rarely takes place in the English language — so once you’re completed along with your draft, you may do a seek at the time period in your phrase processing software and fill in the holes.

You’ll be amazed at how an awful lot you already had for your head, and at how lots faster you could produce a piece of penning this way!

3. Use Automation to Skip Two Million Keystrokes

Rewriting the same replica again and again, or gambling the reduce-and-paste sport several times an hour, is a massive time suck. In the two mins it takes you to type on your bio on the end of a guest submit, you may have written the lede paragraph of a new put up.

I use an app referred to as TextExpander — which expands custom keyboard shortcuts into frequently used textual content — for commonplace reproduction like my e mail signal-off, bio, mailing deal with, book titles, HTML codes, and phrases and terms I use regularly in my writing. You can even use TextExpander abbreviations to insert images, the cutting-edge date, and more. (Similar apps encompass TypeIt4Me for Mac and Breevy for Windows.)

As an instance, when I kind in “rren,” this pops up: The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success. That’s four keystrokes in preference to 80!

TextExpander’s stats say I’ve saved myself from typing over million characters, and feature saved over 142 hours. Yes, that’s six stable days I’ve rescued from the abyss of needless typing.

One trick I discovered years in the past is to be sure the abbreviations you select are letter mixtures you gained’t be the usage of for anything else. For example, if you choose the word “deal with” to enlarge out into your avenue address, with a purpose to additionally occur when you write, “This weblog submit will deal with common time-wasters.”

Try repeating a letter on the the front of the phrase rather. I use the combo “bbio” for my bio and “uurl” for my website URL.

Imagine how a good deal swifter your writing can be if you can honestly kind fewer words!

4. Turn Off the Squiggly Red Lines

You’re all inside the quarter, writing like your existence depends on it — or like you need to pee certainly terrible; see tip #1 — and suddenly you’re stopped for your tracks via a squiggly red line underneath a phrase. You pause to check it, and recognise the program doesn’t apprehend the call of that metropolis in Germany you’re writing approximately.

So you right-click on on “Nuremberg,” pick “Add to Dictionary,” and …

… wherein had been you again?

Your Google Doc or word processing software’s spelling and grammar checkers (we adore Grammarly) are suitable at checking spelling and grammar, however they’re exceptional at yanking you proper from your float. I in reality don’t thoughts the spell checker, but after I have the grammar checker on I discover myself preventing each few minutes to yell, “Shut up, I meant to jot down it that way!”

Guess what? You have the energy to switch off the checkers so you’re able to write without distraction. You can constantly run them when you’ve completed your writing if you need to.

5. Invest in a Faster Pen

Like to jot down first drafts or take notes via hand? The Hack My Study website online did a assessment on which pens are the fastest to jot down with.

Here’s a spoiler: Fountain pens are satisfactory for pure velocity, however they’re also costly and difficult to grasp. The next excellent option is a rollerball pen. These are much less expensive, however they’re still rapid because they devise little friction at the writing floor.

The 0.33 excellent for velocity is the gel pen, that’s much less high-priced than the rollerball, and coming in dead last is the usual ballpoint pen — you realize, the kind you pick out up for free at your nearby bank or dentist’s office.

I can attest to the velocity of the rollerball; a few years in the past I determined to toss out each junky pen inside the residence and update them with some dozen of my favourite brand, the Pilot Precise V7 Rolling Ball Fine — blue for me, black for my husband, and pink simply because. That way, every time I’m inside the mood to write a draft or take notes through hand, I can attain into a kitchen drawer or my purse and be confident of pulling out a fast, clean-writing pen on every occasion.

Stocking up on excellent pens is an funding (it prices around $20 for a 12-percent of the Pilot pen I use), however it’s worth it if it helps you write faster. Not to say you’ll never once more waste valuable writing seconds furiously scribbling on a sheet of scrap paper to get the ink flowing to your reasonably-priced ballpoint.

6. Do B-Minus Work

One of the leader habits that keeps you stuck in sluggish movement is modifying yourself at the same time as writing. There’s nothing like agonizing over the proper word within the middle of writing a weblog post or article to maintain you in perpetual “no longer quite finished” mode. (That addiction, of direction, is a result of perfectionism, another not unusual bugaboo for writers.)

Value accomplished over best and let the phrases fly. Yes, it’s important to have pinnacle-notching writing skills, however deliver your self permission to do B-minus work just to get the thoughts down on paper, then go returned and edit whilst you’re performed. Chances are, you’ll find out your writing changed into quite correct to start with!

The more you withstand modifying your self as you write, the easier writing will become. The simpler writing turns into, the more confident you’ll be. And the more assured you’re for your writing, the quicker the writing procedure gets.

7. Get Zen Before You Pick Up Your Pen

If your writing slows to a virtual move slowly due to the fact you feel the want to check Facebook or answer an email after every sentence, you’ll love OmmWriter, a program that blocks out the files and programs behind the writing web page to minimize distractions.

OmmWriter additionally gives a choice of calming historical past hues and track to keep you in Zen mode as you write, plus soothing sounds with every keystroke. I mainly love the horizontal cursor (as opposed to the same old vertical blinking one) that appears to say “Write on” as opposed to “Stop writing!”

Ommwriter turned into unfastened after I downloaded it several years in the past, but is now a pay-what-you-want app; the average providing is $7.33.

Eight. Stop Letting the Schedule Push You Around

Sometimes a little space is all you need to get perspective on a piece of writing that’s supplying you with suits, so that you can get the phrases out faster.

An instance: Last week I had scheduled myself to write an editorial for my internet site known as “How Writers Waste Time by means of Saving Time,” approximately the risks of cutting corners for your studies and interviews. I eked out about 500 (crappy) words at a glacially gradual pace earlier than giving up; the article sounded more like a rant than a solid carrier piece, and I just couldn’t determine out how to fix it.

Then I seemed over my thoughts for future articles, and one called “Let Future You Handle Your Writing Problems” jumped out at me. I became stimulated! I opened a new Word file, and that article — all 900 words — poured out of me in much less than 60 mins.

This week, I revisited the article I had been caught on, and immediately saw exactly what the hassle became and how to remedy it. An hour later, that article turned into done too.

If you have got control over what you write and whilst you write it, this writing tip is for you: Stop being a slave on your editorial calendar. When you’re wrestling with a scheduled article or submit, allow it go. Scan over your editorial calendar and notice if there are any submit ideas that get you all fired up, and make the switch. You’ll discover that the writing flows a great deal faster that way.

9. Play Games to Boost Your Words Per Minute

A big trouble for lots freelance writers is that we think quicker than we kind. If your mind is churning out terrific thoughts and best turns of phrase at a blazing tempo, however you type slower than my husband seeking to assist me come up with a humorous metaphor for some thing sluggish — you’ll end out your allocated writing time with a most effective fraction of your page packed with, , writing.

Learning to kind is lots greater amusing than it used to be, with many websites presenting unfastened video games, instructions, and tests that will help you up your keyboarding speed. FreeTypingGame.Net has, among different goodies, a sport called The Frogs Are Off Their Diet. A similar web site, WordGames.Com, offers hilariously titled typing challenges like Zombie Typocalypse and Type Type Revolution.

If you frequently discover your self writing on the cross, are looking for out free apps that will help you learn how to kind quicker on your smartphone or tablet. TapTyping is one example for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, and Typing Master is an app that works on Android devices.

10. Gamble with Your Reputation

Feeling aggressive? Challenge yourself to put in writing your blog submit, article, or ebook chapter in a (a good deal) shorter quantity of time than you usually could.

I did this once whilst working with a chum at a café and her jaw dropped open as she watched me complete an 800-phrase article in half-hour. (And yes, it was correct!)

Even higher, wager a pal some thing juicy that you could do it, or throw down the gauntlet on social media. The extra individuals who see it and the harsher the results need to you lose, the much more likely you are to get the ones words down at the double.

On the low-strain end, I additionally love to do mini challenges: I’ll see how a lot I can write in the five minutes even as my tea steeps … within the two minutes earlier than the microwave dings and my lunch is prepared … whilst I’m on hold with AT&T earlier than a person alternatives up. It’s exceptional how quickly you could write when you have mere mins to get it completed.

Be More Prolific than You Ever Thought Possible

Fab news! It took me years to develop and research these effective procedures for writing like a bat out of hell, but you could try all of them on right now.

Feel loose to combine procedures: Turn off the grammar checker, down a couple glasses of water, stir up Ommwriter or the Hemingway app, and use a text expander app to supply B-minus work.

Chances are you’ll increase your pace frequently over, so that you can do even more of what you love (hint: writing & making a living) each day.

Ready for the writing to certainly pour from you? Set your timer and get started!

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