Questions

What is Speed Writing?

What does the Speed Writing tool do?

Does writing quickly not decrease quality?

Can I really use the tool to be able to write thousands of words an hour?

What is the Speed Writing Process?

Why use questions rather than titles for my sections?

What is Speed Writing?

Speed Writing is a technique that helps you dramatically increase the speed you write at.

The average person can type about 40 words a minute. That's 2,400 words an hour. Yet most people take hours to write essays of only a few hundred words.

The Speed Writer Tool uses a number of techniques to force you to significantly increase your word count. It breaks your writing projects up into manageable blocks, then forces you to race against a timer to complete them.

Does writing quickly not decrease quality?

Contrary to what you might think, writing faster can actually increase the quality of your writing. There are three reasons for this...

1. Slow writers are usually not concentrating - simultanously watching TV, browsing the web, or just day-dreaming. Writing under the pressure of a timer puts you into a state of high concentration (or "flow"), rather than giving half-attention
2. The more you write, the more choice you have. It's better to write a lot, then choose the best bits.
3. Most would-be writers just don't write enough, so never improve. The best writers always advise new writers to write as much as possible.

Can I really use the tool to be able to write thousands of words an hour?

Yes, but don't forget that the speed writing tool is just that - a tool. The full speed writing process involves three main stages 1)planning, 2)writing and 3)editing.

The speed writing tool helps with the middle stage - the quantity of words your able to write. The actual quality of writing you produce will depend more on the planning and editing stages.

What is the Speed Writing Process?

There are five steps...

• Split your writing projects into blocks/sections of 150 words. You'll actually write 200 words in a session, but this is so you can edit down later.
• For each block, choose a question you want to answer. You can choose a title instead, but you'll find it easier to write in response to a question.
• Choose up to 6 words or phrases you want to include in your block of text.
• Load the speed writer, and start! Just keep typing. Do not edit as you go! If necessary, just write the sentence again and you can choose the best version during editing.
• Once the time is up, edit down to about 150 words.

Get started with the basic speed writer tool.