How to Write a Thousand Words in Twenty Minutes
When you’re a writer, time is of the essence.
You want to be efficient and get the words out as quickly and succinctly as possible. So how can you do that?
Know your keyboard.
In middle school, we used to have to take keyboard classes. The keyboards were covered with plastic material and for the whole class period, we would focus on how to learn the keys.
We would figure out where every key was to minimize hand movements. We kept going until we knew the keyboard like the back of our hands.
If you know the keyboard, then you can move much faster. Muscle memory is amazing.
Keep moving.
Keep your fingers moving over the keyboard. Even when you don’t know what to write, write that. The goal is to word vomit all over the place. You never know what will come out.
When you keep your fingers moving, you’re letting your brain get out. It’s a stream of consciousness writing that lets all the thoughts empty from your head.
Sometimes something will slip out that you had no clue was there.
Stop editing.
Try your best not to edit. Every time you stop and edit your ideas, you lose time and you lose thoughts. Editing takes time away that you could be using to write your ideas.
Let the thoughts fall from your head and out onto the paper. You can fix typos later. You can’t bring back old thoughts.
Don’t stop to use the backspace button. Keep it going.
When you want to be a faster typist, you need to be able to throw some of the rules out the window.
Efficiency matters, yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to worry about it right away. You can fix it later when you’re editing your draft.
The better you know your keyboard, the better off you are. You can type eons faster when you know where every key is. And no matter what, keep going.
Try not to slow down if you can help it. Allow your thoughts to dump out on the paper and keep going.
Practice on a regular basis and soon you’ll be a typing maverick.
If you’d like to experience the full Medium experience, consider signing up for a membership. Membership will grant you access to all my articles and thousands of other writers on this platform. By signing up with this link, you’ll directly be supporting me. I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
[embed]https://medium.com/@ohsnapitsmags/membership[/embed]
