

They don’t stop shooting the ball altogether. Instead, they stay late at the gym and practice shooting on their own. If a basketball player is having trouble with their shot, they don’t stop shooting and hope they’ll improve after emptying most of a whiskey bottle (looking at you, Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, John Cheever, Ernest Hemingway, and F. I’m not talking about missing lots of shots. Basketball players don’t get shooters blockĭo you ever hear about Michael Jordan or LeBron James developing “shooter’s block,” where they can’t shoot the basketball at all? Not because they have an injury, but because they can’t bear the thought of raising the ball above their heads and sending it towards the basket? Of course not. But what activity besides writing has something like “writer’s block?” I can’t think of any, so that’s why I put it in quotes: it’s not a real thing. Most writers, however, have heard about (or worse, experienced) “writer’s block.” That’s when you stare at the blank page and you can’t seem to write a thing, or everything you write seems to suck. And the more you practice, the faster you’ll improve.

Writing is a skill, and like any other skill - playing an instrument, trading stocks, shooting baskets, cooking - the only way to improve is to practice. Practice writing to become a better writer What if you don’t feel like writing? Speed writing helps you especially if you don’t feel like writing. Speed writing helps you generate new ideas for blog posts, articles, novels - whatever you want to write.
#SPEED WRITE HOW TO#
When you speed write, you learn how to express your ideas in clear and compelling prose.ĭon’t have any ideas? No problem. Speed writing teaches you how to connect your creative brain to your fingertips. I usually edit as I’m writing, which really stops the creative process. I came up with a ton of new ideas and my writing was much more fluid, flowing from one thought to the next. I tried speed writing and it is so freeing. That way, you’ll produce an abundance of new material to edit and then publish. Speed writing is a technique that helps you take that essential first step: writing your words down on a page. Jump-start your creativity with speed writing But you can’t edit until you write something in the first place. If you want to publish top quality material, you need to edit what you write. I’m not talking about editing, either, another critical activity for the aspiring writer. I mean putting words down on the page, one after another, to form sentences, paragraphs, articles, books. I don’t mean sitting at the keyboard, staring at the screen, thinking of what you’re going to write next. Speed writing teaches you how to connect your creative brain to your fingertips.Īnd by writing, I mean actually writing. This daily writing habit will help you improve your writing skills - but it’s only a start, the first step of many you’ll take as you build your writing career. If that sounds like something you’d like to do too, you need to develop the habit of writing every day. Plus, I’m having a great time - I love to write. I’ve published articles on Medium, on my many blogs, and written a children’s book. I’ve written daily for the past seven years, over two million words. Would you like to reach the productivity of Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote his best-selling 245-page novel, The Remains of the Day, in four weeks? Speed writing puts your writing and creativity into overdrive Over the space of the second 20 years, I published an average of 1,700 words a day.

Over a space of 40 years, I published an average of 1,000 words a day. Photo by Veri Ivanova on UnsplashĪre you stuck trying to create your next post or the next chapter for your novel? Are you sick of staring at a blank page, waiting for inspiration to come? Do you aspire to be as prolific as Issac Asimov, who published over 500 books across nine of the ten Dewey Decimal System categories?
