How to Write Quickly (without Sacrificing Quality)

Learning how to write quickly without sacrificing quality is one of the best writing skills that you can master, but it often feels elusive. Some days, you feel like you are on fire; other days, writer’s block kicks in and you can barely write a full, coherent sentence (we’ve all been there). This blog post provides seven tips to help you write faster.

How Long Should It Take to Write Something?

New writers often ask how long it should take them to write a blog. Professional copywriters can often produce a 1,000-word article in one to two hours, but this requires practice and experience.

While this is something to aim for, the truth is that there is no standard time frame. Your writing speed depends on a multitude of factors: the length of the blog or article, the complexity of the topic and how much research you need to do, your familiarity with the topic, and your typing speed. It can also depend on how you are feeling that particular day.

But why is it important that you are able to write quickly? Surely, quality is more important. You are absolutely right! You should always prioritize quality over speed. However, to make a living as a writer, you need to regularly produce content quickly. Therefore, you need to be able to write quickly.

7 Ways to Write Faster

As we mentioned before, increased writing speed comes with practice and experience. While experience only comes with time, there are some things you can do to improve now, especially as a new freelance writer.

1. Keep a Running List of Ideas

If you are writing for a company, they may provide you with topics to cover. But, if you are working completely freelance, you’ll need to create a stream of engaging ideas for yourself. You could spend some time generating ideas and keep a running list of ideas so that when you sit down at your computer, you have something to write about.

2. Make Sure You Understand Your Brief

If you have been provided a brief by your client, make sure to read it carefully and clarify anything you are unsure about. Doing this before you start will save you a lot of heartache (and potential rewrites) later on and allow you just to write. If you don’t have a brief, it can be useful to create one yourself. It will help you stay on track while you are writing.

3. Research Beforehand

When you sit down to write, you don’t want to have to stop every couple of minutes to look something up or check a reference. To avoid constantly stopping, you should research the topic before you start, even if it’s just to have a better understanding of the subject matter. If you’re not sure how to manage your references, check out our blog post: Reference Management: A Guide for Freelance Writers.

4. Write an Outline

Once you have an idea about what you want to include in your writing, it is often a good idea to write an outline so you don’t forget any of your ideas. Here, you can add anything you’ve learned from your research and link to any references. This can help you with the structure of your blog post and with creating a logical sequence of thoughts.

5. Remove Distractions

Distractions are plentiful, especially when you are working from home. It’s important to remove them before you sit down to work if you want to produce content quickly and efficiently. Being comfortable, staying organized, and creating a schedule are just some of the tips we recommend in our blog post on removing distractions.

6. Don’t Overthink It

We know that this is easier said than done! But, while you are writing, just focus on getting your ideas on paper. You can always go back and polish your ideas later in the self-editing phase. Only go back to a previous section if you feel you might forget that idea before you can return to that section. Don’t worry about editing while you are writing.

7. Work Out Your Own Process

This is perhaps the most important piece of advice we can give you, but it also takes some time to implement: Work out what works best for you. While we think the advice above is good, if it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it. You need to find how you can create quality content in a way that is sustainable for you (and where you can balance your work and personal life).

Becoming a Freelance Writer

Taking courses is a great way to improve your writing skills and speed up your writing process, especially if you are new to writing. Our Becoming a Freelance Writer course takes you through how to write a blog post or article from planning to publication.