How to Write Quickly Improve Your Typing Speed

Unlike other professions, writers usually don’t get the luxury to run the clock. Instead, we’re usually paid by the word or try to meet the parameters and word count of assignments. We’re measured by our output. So, it’s in a writer’s best interest to crank out the writing in the fastest way possible while maintaining a professional standard of quality. But how do writers write quickly? In this article, we’ll take a look at number of writing strategies and tips that you can use to boost your writing speed. How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? This might sound like a really obvious insight, but if you’re a musician, you are usually expected to practice your scales and rudiments to increase your fluency of the fundamentals. With repetition comes speed. Why shouldn’t it be the same for writers? If anything, your fingers must keep pace with your thoughts. Any break in the flow causes writing hiccups that stunt your writing and â€Å"trip† you up. You don’t want anything to impede your thoughts—this starts with the mechanics. For â€Å"hunt-and-peck† writers out there, you owe it to yourself to bring your writing up to speed. If you can only type 45 WPM, why not strive to bring your writing up to 60 WPM? That’s a 33% increase in your output. To give you a monetary incentive, if you currently make $30,000/year from your freelance writing, you could make an additional $10,000 just by putting a few hours of practice. I don’t know about you, but those typing programs could pay for themselves! So, how can you practice and not make it tedious? If you’re a fan of classic arcade games AND increasing your typing speed, then FreeTypingGame.net might be the answer. If you’re more competitive, then TypeRacer may be more fun; best of all, you compete with people around the world for leaderboard status. The last I checked, someone clocked 180 WPM, which is insane. Shortcuts There’s more to typing to than just WPMs. Navigating your document can slow most writers down. That’s why I advocate memorizing a few shortcuts with your mouse and keyboard. Here’s a few shortcuts that I use regularly: Double and Triple Clicking: Want to select an entire word without selecting the very beginning and end of a word? Double click it. Simple enough, but now try three rapid clicks. You can select entire paragraphs! Useful with copy-and-paste jobs (see below). Ctrl + F: For most word processing programs (i.e. MS Word, OpenOffice, etc.) and web browsers, pressing Ctrl and F together brings up a quick search menu within the document. This is really helpful to find places in documents where I may have left off (see â€Å"TK† If You Don’t Know below), or longer documents where you may want to add/edit text. Additionally, this search menu is often coupled with a â€Å"find replace† feature to correct endemic errors that flew beneath the copyediting radar. Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V: Ah, the good ‘ol copy-paste. When I need to copy text or move large paragraphs to different parts, nothing is quicker than copying a large chunk of text and pasting it elsewhere. This also helps with repetitive formatting, where I may need a similar structure that needs to be filled later on with thoughtful prose. Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y: Hey, we all make mistakes. That’s why Ctrl + Z is such a great command, allowing you to undo your previous errors in sequence. Ctrl + Y performs a re-do, where you can cycle forward after â€Å"undoing† an edit. Of course, once you break the linear editing â€Å"narrative,† you may not be able fix your error completely. (Btw, if you’re an Apple user, you should know that Ctrl = Command key) â€Å"TK† If You Don’t Know Kelly James-Enger, the author of The Six-Figure Freelancer, has a great tip for writing continuously: If you have a word at the tip of your tongue but can’t quite spit it out, don’t linger over it. You’ll only weigh your subconscious down. James-Enger simply writes â€Å"TK† in place of the word/idea, coming back to that spot in the future. Why TK? Because there’s no English word that starts with those two letters, so they won’t get lost in the mix. Simply use the Ctrl + F shortcut from the last section to find all the TKs, and boom!, you just saved time where you’d normally be searching your mind’s index for all your missing writing holes. This also works with entire ideas. Sometimes chasing an idea down a rabbit hole might stymie your efforts. Writing TK followed by an idea, like â€Å"TK suicide by wrapping paper† can give you enough to go on when you’re in the final stretch to creating your first draft. Now, you may be thinking that you’ll â€Å"lose† what word/idea you were thinking of, but if your writing is cohesive enough, the word (or its synonyms) or ideas will present themselves from your previous writing. Remember, each word is worth money and does anyone really care if you use â€Å"supercilious† vs. â€Å"stuck-up†? Bop Around Who needs medication anyways? Call me ADD, but I find that by bouncing from new projects and assignments rather than working continuously on one piece until it is completed is a better approach to keeping my attention engaged. Other times, I’m completely tunnel-visioned on a topic and I can eschew this approach, but when I start getting fidgety, it’s time to bop around. This works especially well for projects that are linked under one deadline, or that require interlinks between content. I work until my mind hits a mental wall, then jump to a new one. Even if all I can get out is a rough format or just writing the title, this helps get over the fear of starting a new document from scratch. Let Something/Someone Else Handle It For the sake of reducing redundancy, this article covers how you can use dictation software and outsourcing your labor to â€Å"write† quicker. * * * Hopefully these writing strategies improve your pace and increase your writing speed—something all writers can benefit from. You owe it to your business and your future to put them into action. And, oh yeah, if you’re actually trying to get directions to Carnegie Hall, it’s on 57th Street and 7th Avenue.