If you write for a living than you know how important it is to write quickly.  When your income is connected to how much you can write in one day, you not only have to have good quality content, but you understand that time is money!  The more writing that you can produce in a day, the more potential you have for earning money.

Of course, you might have noticed that the faster you write the more issues you have with your writing.  Speed often means errors, mistakes, and problems.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there are ways to increase your writing speed without all the problems.  Learning how to write faster and still be effective can result in you earning more.  With that in mind, here are some tips to help you write faster.

8 Ways To Write Faster

1. Don’t Edit While You Work

Yes, you are going to make mistakes, but just let your fingers fly as fast as they can.  A great way to write faster is to just get all of the content down on the paper without worrying about those little red or green underlines that you might be leaving in your wake.  Once you have all of the information on the page, then go back to edit and clean up your piece.  This is a much more effective use of your time.

2. Practice, Practice, Practice

Yes, this is a cliché, but what’s funny about clichés is that they are usually true!  The more that you type, the easier it gets.  Remember the first time you sat down in front of a keyboard?  Do you remember hunting and pecking?  It took time to learn how to type without thinking about it.  Just like any skill, the more that you practice the better you will become.

3. Create a Plan

No, you don’t have to write out a full outline as though you were still in school, but if you create a basic plan and direction for your writing it is going to help your writing flow much more easily.  Try writing out all the main points that you want to talk about first and then go back and expand on them.  Perhaps these can be your subtitles to each of your main paragraphs or just a good way to structure your post.

4. Create a Deadline

Yes, your client might not need that writing project until the end of the week, but that doesn’t mean you should wait until five minutes before that deadline to start working on it.  Give yourself the time that you really need to work on the project, long before the deadline approaches.  This is going to help you to stay on track, well ahead of your deadlines, and give you more practice with speed.

If you aren’t set a deadline, then set yourself one!  Deadlines are great for putting a bit of pressure on you to get stuck in.  Of course, if you set your own deadline then make sure you stick to it.

5. Stay on Track

As a freelance writer we often have to fight against the many distractions that vie for our attention every day.  One way to write faster is to cut out as many of those distractions as possible.  This could be anything from going on social media sites to regularly checking your emails.  It may appear like your working, but that article is still going to need writing.

Give yourself a time limit of how long you are going to work before you allow yourself to indulge in distraction.  Then, give yourself a time limit on how long you will do something other than write.  When you have a strong plan for your distractions you will see that you are able to accomplish much more in a day.

6. Use the ‘Five W’s’

This is an old writing trick.  With any writing piece, make sure that you include the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, and ‘why’.  By using this template you already have a simple outline that allows you to easily follow along without having to reinvent the wheel with each new project.

7. Research Ahead of Time

If you need to do some research for your writing piece do this before you sit down to write.  Take care of all the research ahead of time.  This will put ideas in your head and give you a clear path for what you want to say.  Not only that, but trying to research a subject whilst you are trying to make a deadline is not going to look very good.  You can’t hope conduct proper research when you are in a rush, that’s why you should always do this in advance.

8. Don’t Be Too Hard On Yourself

Remember, everyone has bad days.  If you don’t get through as much as you would like to, that’s okay.  Give yourself a break and keep in mind that it takes time to get where you want to be.  Keep at it and you will do fine.

What other methods do you use to help you write faster?  Let us know by leaving a comment below!

Image by ‘KatieKrueger’ – [Source]