5 ways to write faster—and have more fun doing it
Wait. Throw away that outline, says writing coach Daphne Gray-Grant. Learn to ask the right questions. Stop disheartening yourself with negative writer talk. And have you tried a timer?
“Ugh! This is terrible writing. This is so boring. My boss is really going to hate this.”
If an evil writing gremlin whispers such discouragements in your ear as you craft a story, borrow a page from writing coach Daphne Gray-Grant.
That evil inner voice is one of five commonplace roadblocks to writing well, she says in a Ragan Training session, “How to write twice as fast and havethree times as much fun.”
To boost your writing speed—and your enjoyment of the task—follow this advice:
1. Don’t edit while you write.
Do you write a sentence and immediately start fiddling with it? Just write, says Gray-Grant. Get the words on the page. Separate the writing task from the editing task.
She recommends a few tricks for doing this:
You might think it would drive you nuts, but Gray-Grant says it makes writing feel like a game and that it drowns out those negative voices.
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